[Info-vax] Why it is a good idea that OpenVMS isn't on x86-64 just yet

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

Den 2016-01-15 kl. 14:02, skrev Craig A. Berry:
> On 1/15/16 6:16 AM, Neil Rieck wrote:
>> Why it is a good idea that OpenVMS isn't on x86-64 just yet
>>
>> Skylake bug causes Intel chips to freeze under 'complex workloads'
>>
>> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/220953-skylake-bug-causes-intel-chips-to-freeze-in-complex-workloads
>>
>
> Might be good we don't have OpenSSH yet either:
>
> http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2016/q1/97
>
>
>

I the first case (Skylark) it is quite unlikely that any typical
OpenVMS environment/application would be hit by this. And it seems
to only have been seen when running an application called "Prime95":

"Prime95 is the freeware application written by George Woltman that
is used by GIMPS, a distributed computing project dedicated to
finding new Mersenne prime numbers".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersenne_prime


In the second case, it is an OpenSSH *client* problem that also
needs an compromised OpenSSH server to be exploited. And the
fix is easy and (now) documentet. Also see the part saying:

"This information leak affects all OpenSSH clients >= 5.4, but its
impact is slightly reduced by the following four reasons:..."