AMD asleep at the wheel?
"
When I started to explore the countermeasure in detail earlier this month, one of the first of Microsoft's Web pages describing SP2 that I happened to find said, "Microsoft is working with microprocessor companies to help Windows support hardware-enforced data execution prevention (DEP) on microprocessors that contain the feature. Data execution prevention uses the CPU to mark all memory locations in an application as non-executable, unless the location explicitly contains executable code. This way, when an attacking worm or virus inserts program code into a portion of memory marked for data only, an application or Windows component will not run it."
The page lacked the additional information that Windows XP users needed to determine whether or not their systems supported DEP. Noting the omission, I assumed that both Intel and AMD were already supporting the feature and that, to finish off my coverage of SP2, I only needed to figure out what the manufacturing cut-off dates were in terms of systems that didn't support DEP versus those that did. But a search of the Web turned up a recent story in The Register that alerted me to the fact that support for DEP wasn't yet available in Intel's Nocona Xeon processors. Within a few hours, I learned that AMD has been shipping processors with DEP support for over a year, while Intel -- except for Itanium -- wouldn't be shipping its DEP-supporting "XD" processors until Q4 2004. "XD" is Intel parlance for DEP and stands for "execute disable."
http://zdnet.com.com/2102-1105_2-5310417.html?tag=printthis
"
When I started to explore the countermeasure in detail earlier this month, one of the first of Microsoft's Web pages describing SP2 that I happened to find said, "Microsoft is working with microprocessor companies to help Windows support hardware-enforced data execution prevention (DEP) on microprocessors that contain the feature. Data execution prevention uses the CPU to mark all memory locations in an application as non-executable, unless the location explicitly contains executable code. This way, when an attacking worm or virus inserts program code into a portion of memory marked for data only, an application or Windows component will not run it."
The page lacked the additional information that Windows XP users needed to determine whether or not their systems supported DEP. Noting the omission, I assumed that both Intel and AMD were already supporting the feature and that, to finish off my coverage of SP2, I only needed to figure out what the manufacturing cut-off dates were in terms of systems that didn't support DEP versus those that did. But a search of the Web turned up a recent story in The Register that alerted me to the fact that support for DEP wasn't yet available in Intel's Nocona Xeon processors. Within a few hours, I learned that AMD has been shipping processors with DEP support for over a year, while Intel -- except for Itanium -- wouldn't be shipping its DEP-supporting "XD" processors until Q4 2004. "XD" is Intel parlance for DEP and stands for "execute disable."
http://zdnet.com.com/2102-1105_2-5310417.html?tag=printthis
