This is the mail archive of the
gcc@gcc.gnu.org
mailing list for the GCC project.
Re: GCC and Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities
- From: Zan Lynx <zlynx at acm dot org>
- To: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org,Eric Gallager <egall at gwmail dot gwu dot edu>
- Date: Thu, 04 Jan 2018 20:14:48 -0700
- Subject: Re: GCC and Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities
- Authentication-results: sourceware.org; auth=none
- References: <CAMfHzOtmtS9JcbXz0S4PF+ecpCL7nFa=6nLR56S7AY-jMazyYQ@mail.gmail.com>
On January 4, 2018 8:10:14 PM MST, Eric Gallager <egall@gwmail.gwu.edu> wrote:
>Is there anything GCC could be doing at the compiler level to mitigate
>the recently-announced Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities? From
>reading about them, it seems like they involve speculative execution
>and indirect branch prediction, and those are the domain of things the
>compiler deals with, right? (For reference, Meltdown is CVE-2017-5754,
>and Spectre is CVE-2017-5753 and CVE-2017-5715)
>
>Just wondering,
>Eric
If you're allowing people to run untrustworthy machine code on your hardware there's nothing a compiler can do to help. You'd need to make them use your compiler, and why would they?
So anyone offering shell accounts or virtual machines is out of luck.