Spectre V2 is an indirect branch poisoning attack that can lead to data leakage.
An exploit for Spectre V2 tricks the indirect branch predictor into executing
code from a future indirect branch chosen by the attacker, even if the privilege
level is different.
Since Linux Kernel 4.15 you can check the Spectre V2 mitigation state with the following command:
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/spectre_v2
Enforce the Spectre V2 mitigation by adding the argument
spectre_v2=on to the default
GRUB 2 command line for the Linux operating system.
To ensure that spectre_v2=on) is added as a kernel command line
argument to newly installed kernels, add spectre_v2=on) to the
default Grub2 command line for Linux operating systems. Modify the line within
/etc/default/grub as shown below:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="... spectre_v2=on) ..."
Run the following command to update command line for already installed kernels:# update-grub