[tor-bugs] #21010 [Applications/Tor Browser Sandbox]: Disable RDTSC/RDTSCP to limit side-channel attacks

Sat Dec 17 08:29:31 UTC 2016

#21010: Disable RDTSC/RDTSCP to limit side-channel attacks
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 Reporter:  cypherpunks                       |          Owner:  yawning
     Type:  enhancement                       |         Status:  new
 Priority:  High                              |      Milestone:
Component:  Applications/Tor Browser Sandbox  |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal                            |     Resolution:
 Keywords:                                    |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                                    |         Points:
 Reviewer:                                    |        Sponsor:
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Changes (by yawning):

 * priority:  Medium => High

Comment:

 Yeah, I gave serious thought about disabling this when I was initially
 writing the code, primarily to frustrate some of the timing attacks
 against ASLR.  I'll definitely look into this when I have a moment, but
 this week has been dealing with all of the dumb bugs I had in the code
 that got shipped, and I still have the update logic rewrite to do at a
 minimum.

 Bumping the priority up to high, because this is important.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/21010#comment:1>
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