This CVE has already been announced in FreeBSD SA-19:26.mcu.
Mitigation for TAA involves either turning off TSX or turning on the
VERW mitigation used for MDS. Some CPUs will also be self-mitigating
for TAA and require no software workaround.
Control knobs are:
machdep.mitigations.taa.enable:
0 - no software mitigation is enabled
1 - attempt to disable TSX
2 - use the VERW mitigation
3 - automatically select the mitigation based on processor
features.
machdep.mitigations.taa.state:
inactive - no mitigation is active/enabled
TSX disable - TSX is disabled in the bare metal CPU as well as
- any virtualized CPUs
VERW - VERW instruction clears CPU buffers
not vulnerable - The CPU has identified itself as not being
vulnerable
Nothing in the base FreeBSD system uses TSX. However, the instructions
are straight-forward to add to custom applications and require no kernel
support, so the mitigation is provided for users with untrusted
applications and tenants.
Reviewed by: emaste, imp, kib, scottph
Sponsored by: Intel
Differential Revision: 22374
3a09fa0468