Introduction to Meltdown/Spectre
Details
Note: we're back at Rackspace this month!
Join us at 7:00 PM on Wednesday, Febuary 7th as Kim Phillips presents "Introduction to Meltdown/Spectre"! The show starts at 7:00, though doors open at 6:30.Please arrive ahead of time so we can get ready and you can focus on enjoying delicious pizza, which will be sponsored once again by our friends at Globalscape.
A brief overview of Meltdown [1] and the other two Spectre variants will be presented, including going through and running the memory-reading demo (variant 1) available in the Spectre Attack paper [2]. Many hardware and software vendors are still in flux wrt how they're handling each of the Spectre variants, but Kim will try to give an update on how Linux is coping.
In order to gain the most out of the talk, try to brush up on how modern CPU caches, MMUs (Memory Management Units), branch predictors, speculative execution micro-architectures, and privilege level transitions work.
[1] https://meltdownattack.com
[2] https://spectreattack.com/spectre.pdf
Kim went from developing image compression algorithms in graduate school, to parallelizing a high volume sort engine, to adding OS support to a DSP architecture, to adding support for embedded networking chips in the upstream u-boot and linux kernel projects with an emphasis on crypto offload h/w. He now works on the linux perf tool for Arm. He also likes to think he can fix his carburetted bike in his spare time.
The talk will take place at Rackspace's Austin office, located on the East side of IH-35 right before Rundberg and after Henna Chevrolet (there is a sign for Rackspace which is visible from the highway). Feel free to park in the same lot as the big Rackspace flag.
Introduction to Meltdown/Spectre