Creaking Chromebooks getting Meltdown protection soon
Older Chromebook owners should keep an eye open for Chrome OS updates, bcause Google’s announced they’ll get Meltdown protection soon.
The fix for the now-notorious speculative execution side-channel will arrive in Chrome OS 66. This went to the beta channel for Android last Friday (March 16).
Older Chromebooks running kernel 3.14 or 3.8 will get the Kernel Page Table Isolation (KPTI) Meltdown mitigation in Chrome OS 66.
The vendor list had all the familiar names: Acer, ASUS, Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba and Google (for kernel 3.14); with HP, LG and Samsung added to that list for kernel 3.18 machines.
Intel-based Chromebooks received the retpoline compiler-based mitigation as of Chrome OS 65.
As the advisory noted, ARM-based Chrome OS devices weren’t subject to Meltdown, and Google’s still working to implement ARM’s Spectre remediations.
On March 20, Chrome OS 65 had a separate bug-fix release for its Windows, Linux and Mac desktop version. There was one security fix in release 65.0.3325.181, but for now the nature of the fix is under wraps while the update rolls out. ®
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Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/21/chrome_os_66_meltdown_fix/