Saint Fallout, Radioactive Rain From the Store Buffers

Patron of the CPU's store buffers, the MDS attacks, and everyone who gathers the leftovers in memory.

Life

In May 2019, with broader disclosure in November, researchers revealed Fallout, part of the MDS (Microarchitectural Data Sampling) family: using speculative execution one could sample data that had just passed through the processor's store buffers, the small temporary holds for writes. From any program a fallout of other people's fragments rained down, kernel data included. Intel fixed it with microcode and buffer flushing on context switches.

Prayer

O Saint Fallout, who rains down the leftovers of others' writes, let our buffers empty before they change masters. Amen.

How to celebrate

Celebrated by updating the microcode and enabling buffer flushing on context switch.

Where writing is hasty, something rains back down.