When 4.1? I want Heads - issue #3388 + Rowhammer?

[Andreas Moreiro]

github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/3388
I hope you guys will fix the issue in 4.1. I would do it myself, but don't
have experience.

Has there been any talk of Qubes and the older Rowhammer attack?
Becase Xen is probably vulnerable:
https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurity16/sec16_paper_xiao.pdf
https://www.wired.com/2016/08/new-form-hacking-breaks-ideas-computers-work/

I belive RAM encryption to be a good solution.I could see in the Whonix
forum that there was a xen patch for RAM encryption that as designed for
qubes.
https://www.whonix.org/blog/ram-encryption

Maybe this can help

[Tai...@gmx.com]

On 08/08/2018 02:18 PM, Andreas Moreiro wrote:
> github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/3388
> I hope you guys will fix the issue in 4.1. I would do it myself, but don't
> have experience.
>
> Has there been any talk of Qubes and the older Rowhammer attack?
> Becase Xen is probably vulnerable:

"Xen" isn't vulnerable this is not a software issue it is a cheap (as in
poor manufacturing standards not price) RAM issue and it only really
effects laptops with high density ram not desktops and servers.

If you want security you can buy a workstation such as the KCMA-D8 or
KGPE-D16 boards that have available libre board/bmc firmware and support
ECC memory which means you are immune to all known rowhammer attacks if
you purchase decent ram (again quality not price)

The above two boards work great with qubes 4.0 and are the last and best
owner controlled x86 boards.

Another option if you aren't using xen/qubes is the TALOS 2 running an
OpenPOWER9 CPU - POWER is now the only owner controlled CPU arch and
what I recommend for new systems. It is arguably more secure to use
POWER with trustworthy open source POWER-KVM virt and set up a virt
environment that mimics the qubes features than have an ME/PSP qubes
system and I very much hope qubes/xen will be ported to POWER soon.

If you want a laptop the best choice is the G505S which is an older
pre-PSP AMD system that supports open source cpu/ram init coreboot[1] -
after the rowhammer issue went public the ram refresh rate was increased
as a patch for rowhammer which makes it much harder to exploit (this is
the same thing the major OEM's did

[1]There are dishonest companies selling new intel "open firmware
coreboot" systems but in reality the hardware init is entirely performed
by the Intel FSP binary blob instead of coreboot and their ME is not
actually disabled (It is impossible to disable ME - the kernel and init
code still run on those "disabled" systems)

> https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurity16/sec16_paper_xiao.pdf
> https://www.wired.com/2016/08/new-form-hacking-breaks-ideas-computers-work/
>
> I belive RAM encryption to be a good

It isn't.

Don't drink the wintel kool-aid - intel/amd's ram crypto is made for DRM
and DRM only and it is easily defeated by malicious applications.

Both intel/amd's "feature" is yet another ME/PSP application that is not
owner controlled.