Kernel Isolation: From an Academic Idea to an Efficient Patch for Every Computer

;login: Enters a New Phase of Its Evolution

For over 20 years, ;login: has been a print magazine with a digital version; in the two decades previous, it was USENIX’s newsletter, UNIX News. Since its inception 45 years ago, it has served as a medium through which the USENIX community learns about useful tools, research, and events from one another. Beginning in 2021, ;login: will no longer be the formally published print magazine as we’ve known it most recently, but rather reimagined as a digital publication with increased opportunities for interactivity among authors and readers.

Since USENIX became an open access publisher of papers in 2008, ;login: has remained our only content behind a membership paywall. In keeping with our commitment to open access, all ;login: content will be open to everyone when we make this change. However, only USENIX members at the sustainer level or higher, as well as student members, will have exclusive access to the interactivity options. Rik Farrow, the current editor of the magazine, will continue to provide leadership for the overall content offered in ;login:, which will be released via our website on a regular basis throughout the year.

As we plan to launch this new format, we are forming an editorial committee of volunteers from throughout the USENIX community to curate content, meaning that this will be a formally peer-reviewed publication. This new model will increase opportunities for the community to contribute to ;login: and engage with its content. In addition to written articles, we are open to other ideas of what you might want to experience.

The disclosure of the Meltdown vulnerability in early 2018 was an earthquake for the security community. Meltdown allows temporarily bypassing the most fundamental access permissions before a deferred permission check is finished: that is, the userspace-accessible bit is not reliable, allowing unrestricted access to kernel pages. More specifically, during out-of-order execution, the processor fetches or stores memory locations that are protected via access permissions and continues the outof- order execution of subsequent instructions with the retrieved or modified data, even if the access permission check failed. Most Intel, IBM, and Apple processors from recent years are affected as are several other processors. While AMD also defers the permission check, it does not continue the out-of-order execution of subsequent instructions with data that is supposed to be inaccessible.

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Kernel Isolation: From an Academic Idea to an Efficient Patch for Every Computer (PDF)

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SECURITY