Re: Is Debian Linux protected against the Meltdown and Spectre security flaws?

[Michael Fothergill <michael.fothergill@gmail.com>]

On 19 February 2018 at 13:13, Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming <tdteoenming@gmail.com> wrote:

What are the patches that I can download and install to be protected
against the Meltdown and Spectre security vulnerabilities?

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Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming's Academic Qualifications as at 30 Oct 2017

[1] https://tdtemcerts.wordpress.com/

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​Checkout the debian backports suite (kindly resourcefully suggested by Andy Smith)

Easiest thing to do when requiring a newer kernel would be to check
the backports suite, so in this case in stretch-backports we find
linux-image-amd64:

    <https://packages.debian.org/stretch-backports/linux-image-amd64>

That's a virtual package that gets you the latest real kernel
package available in that suite, which right now is
linux-image-4.14.0-0.bpo.3-amd64:

    <https://packages.debian.org/stretch-backports/linux-image-amd64>

>From there, if you look on the right you will see the Debian
changelog link
<http://ftp-master.metadata.debian.org/changelogs//main/l/linux/linux_4.14.13-1~bpo9+1_changelog>
which tells us that this corresponds to upstream release 4.14.13.
The upstream release was made on 10 January and this backports
package came on 14 January, so that's pretty swift.

Newer kernels should be there now and there may well be one that deals with both the meltdown and spectre vaulbnerabilities jointly.

Regards

Michael Fothergill