Defending against page-cache attacks [LWN.net]

Defending against page-cache attacks

Posted Jan 18, 2019 19:23 UTC (Fri) by quotemstr (subscriber, #45331)
In reply to: Defending against page-cache attacks by Nahor
Parent article: Defending against page-cache attacks

Well, yeah. The whole reason we share stuff in the first place is to make efficient use of limited system resources. As resources become cheaper, the case for elaborate (and apparently insecurity-prone) sharing mechanisms diminishes. The future of computing is straight-up partitioning, sharing nothing. It's a much simpler and more robust world.

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Defending against page-cache attacks

Posted Jan 24, 2019 5:15 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> > > > So the known mechanisms for non-destructively querying the state of the page cache are likely to be shut down, perhaps only if the kernel is configured into a "secure mode".

> The future of computing is straight-up partitioning, sharing nothing. It's a much simpler and more robust world.

To avoid a myriad of new CONFIG_SECURE_SIDE_CHANNEL_FOO options, how about a unique CONFIG_SHARED_SYSTEM setting controlling all these at once?

"Shared" can unfortunately apply to single-user systems too, think Android applications for instance :-(