[svlug] j-core vs RISC-V

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Rob Landley (rob at landley.net):

> (My opinion is you don't secure a system by _adding_ stuff. You secure
> a system by _removing_ stuff.) 

Absolutely amen to that.  It continually amazes me how many people,
including managers in charge of computer/software architecture, refuse
to get this.

[snip description of the 'turtle boards', for which, thanks]

> Your average laptop has something like 7 different processors in it and
> they're all exploitable:
> 
> http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/meet-badbios-the-mysterious-mac-and-pc-malware-that-jumps-airgaps/

It's of grave concern -- even though I don't buy the Ruiu narrative.

> http://hackaday.com/2013/08/02/sprite_tm-ohm2013-talk-hacking-hard-drive-controller-chips/

Not any old process has the privilege to reflash a HBA's firmware -- but
this is a reminder, at minimum, about how much a host is at the mercy of
such firmware if it _does_ somehow get altered.

> http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/05/gpu-based-rootkit-and-keylogger-offer-superior-stealth-and-computing-power/

Now, _that_ one (running malware on the GPU) I've been expecting for a
while.

> The most surprising email I got back when I was maintaining busybox was
> from the administrator of the big wargames-style display at Cheyenne
> Mountain (which was still open at the time) saying it was running
> busybox. When I went "dear FSM _why_" he said they had to audit every
> line of code that goes into those systems and they'd rather audit 1
> megabyte of busybox than 110 megabytes of equivalent gnu crap. (Can't
> argue...)

Makes you feel a bit better about paying taxes, doesn't it?  I'll have
to tell you, some time, a similarly reassuring experience I had at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory when I was working for a firm
delivering there a very large HPC cluster.  Some places, you're
extremely glad to find that they do security right.


> We've got a 64-bit instruction set speced out on
> http://j-core.org/roadmap.html 

Lovely.

> Eh, politics. Not my area.

But you're clueful about politics, anyway.  I frequently point people to
https://landley.net/notes-2010.html#18-07-2010 when the subject of Linux
Foundation comes up.  I rather like your habit of letting the facts be
known.

> What was his query? 

He asked:  'Do you think there is any chance to see large deployment of
Linux on a new architecture?'

-- 
May those that love us love us; and those that don't love us, may
God turn their hearts; and if he doesn't turn their hearts, may
he turn their ankles so we'll know them by their limping.