Meltdown and Spectre bugs: Difference between revisions

Meltdown and Spectre are bugs related to speculative execution in a variety of CPU architectures developed during the past ten to fifteen years and which affect in particular processors from Intel and AMD, including those in use on Compute Canada clusters. A detailed discussion of the two bugs can be found on [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/meltdown-and-spectre-every-modern-processor-has-unfixable-security-flaws/ this page]. Compute Canada personnel are currently patching systems deemed sensitive to these vulnerabilities.  

Updates to patch the vulnerabilities require updating the operating system and rebooting the nodes. For compute nodes, this is typically done in a rolling fashion, resulting in nodes being unavailable for a short period of time. This may impair the scheduling of large jobs, but typically goes unnoticed by users. Some nodes, such as login nodes and cloud hosts, will however see a short interruption of service.

Many groups around the world, including within Compute Canada, are running benchmarks to evaluate the effects of the operating system patches on performance. Certain figures that have been cited are alarming (up to a 30% or even 50% performance hit), while others are very minimal.

Teams managing the Compute Canada clusters are acting diligently to update their servers as needed and as patches are released by various vendors. Many servers have already been patched, but some may require more updates as vendors release new patches.

Update your virtual machine's operating system to the latest version frequently over the coming days to ensure it has the latest security patches to address these bugs. See [[Security_considerations_when_running_a_VM#Updating_your_VM|updating your VM]] for specific instructions on how to update Linux VMs.