Intel Revs New Linux Patches Providing For Shadow Stacks For User-Space

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Revs New Linux Patches Providing For Shadow Stacks For User-Space

For years Intel has been working on Linux patches for supporting their Control-Flow Enforcement Technology (CET) with Indirect Branch Tracking and Shadow Stack support. It's been in the works for years and through many revisions while now they are pursuing a new route and focusing just on the Shadow Stack user-space functionality...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-Shadow-Stack-User-Space

[Space Heater]

After ~30 revisions Intel is now just restarting the whole series and they are even dropping IBT support for now. With thread director support also still out of tree it's really sad to see how poorly Intel is supporting their new hardware on Linux.

[zcansi]

For those who are wondering, this is available in Intel 11th generation CPUs and AMD Ryzen 5000-series CPUs.

The rescoping of this patch series actually seems like a really good sign to me. Intel has a long history of coming up with innovative features which require complex and invasive changes to the kernel, and which few people initially care enough about to get it merged. Taking a more gradual and demand-driven approach may lead to more success.

[Vorpal]

Looks like a neat idea. I read through the cover letter and it addressed the questions I had (signals and various approaches to user space threads such as makecontext and fibres).