Linux Creator Linus Torvalds Calls Out Intel, AMD, NVIDIA & Others For “Buggy Hardware”, Claiming That They Are Behind The OS’s Vulnerabilities

Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, is apparently “frustrated” with the buggy hardware by the likes of Intel, AMD & NVIDIA, claiming that manufacturers are the reason behind vulnerabilities.

Linus Torvalds Expresses Resentment Towards Hardware Manufacturers, Including Intel, AMD & NVIDIA, Ahead of Kernel Code Modifications To Fix Theoretical Attacks

Well, Linux’s creator has a way of expressing problems over the OS, primarily when associated with an external factor, likely CPU companies such as AMD and Intel. Torvalds has recently been quite active in fixing the Linux kernel due to reported bugs and crashes. This time, according to him, he has expressed his resentment towards the modifications being made in the open-source kernel to cater to vulnerabilities that are a fault of the hardware manufacturer.

Torvalds specifically points out Intel’s newest CPUs that debut with support for LAM (Linear Address Masking), and here is what he had to say (via kernel.org) in the Linux Kernel Mailing List public inbox:

Honestly, I’m pretty damn fed up with buggy hardware and completely theoretical attacks that have never actually shown themselves to be used in practice. So I think this time we push back on the hardware people and tell them it’s *THEIR* damn problem, and if they can’t even be bothered to say yay-or-nay, we just sit tight.

Because dammit, let’s put the onus on where the blame lies, and not just take any random “….” from bad hardware and say “oh, but it *might* be a problem”.

– Linus Torvalds

Well, these are indeed some interesting choice of words, but you can’t argue with what Torvalds is claiming, given that it is indeed hectic to fix a problem in the kernel, which is likely associated with the “hardware people” and their implementation. In terms of LAM, this particular feature is used to ensure memory integrity by employing a “pointer-based implementation”; however, this technique has resulted in frequent speculation attacks called SLAM, which is apparently what is bothering Torvalds for now.

An Intel engineer has responded to the LAM issue, claiming that it was intended to be disabled until a fix was implemented, but this didn’t happen. He contended that SLAM attacks would eventually be avoided by LASS (Linear Address Space Separation), but the team hasn’t pushed out the fix for now.

Previously, we reported on how Linus Torvalds showed resentment against AMD’s fTPM and called out the firm to disable the feature, claiming that it shouldn’t be used at runtime. So, Torvalds has a knack for calling out companies publicly, which is why he is known for his interesting remarks.