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speed47 / spectre-meltdown-checker

Reptar, Downfall, Zenbleed, ZombieLoad, RIDL, Fallout, Foreshadow, Spectre, Meltdown vulnerability/mitigation checker for Linux & BSD
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OpenBSD support #399

Closed h3artbl33d closed 3 years ago

h3artbl33d commented 3 years ago

First of all, thank you for all the hard work - greatly appreciated!

The spectre-meltdown-checker script supports all Linux distributions and the majority of the BSD flavors. I did notice that OpenBSD isn't supported; is there a specific reason for it?

speed47 commented 3 years ago

First of all, thank you for all the hard work - greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

The spectre-meltdown-checker script supports all Linux distributions and the majority of the BSD flavors. I did notice that OpenBSD isn't supported; is there a specific reason for it?

Yes, this is because what the script does is checking deeply in the OS (actually, the kernel) and in the CPU (by querying low-level information about mitigations support etc.), to give you the information about how these ranges of vulnerabilities apply to your system. The main target is Linux, but then FreeBSD was not a gigantic leap to implement because they have a compatbility layer : linprocfs, so most of the script worked out of the box, I just needed to add code to dig properly in the FreeBSD kernel (obviously, it has nothing to do with the Linux kernel). This is easier however because there are not bazillions of different versions / flavors / compilations / unofficial patches to the FreeBSD kernel, while this is the case for the Linux kernel, and is actually one of the main reasons this script exists.

Implementing support for other BSDs would mean reimplement everything (as there's no linprocfs), and also digging on each specific kernel. This would effectively be a completely different script, and it's the same amount of work that e.g. trying to port that to Windows, unfortunately.

speed47 commented 3 years ago

This has been added as a new entry to the also brand new FAQ :)

Closing as a result, don't hesitate to reopen if needed!