Friday, January 5th 2018
Intel Released "Coffee Lake" Knowing it Was Vulnerable to Spectre and Meltdown
By the time Intel launched its 8th generation Core "Coffee Lake" desktop processor family (September 25, 2017, with October 5 availability), the company was fully aware that the product it is releasing was vulnerable to the three vulnerabilities plaguing its processors today, the two more publicized of which, are "Spectre" and "Meltdown." Google Project Zero teams published their findings on three key vulnerabilities, Spectre (CVE-2017-5753 and CVE-2017-5715); and Meltdown (CVE-2017-5754) in mid-2017, shared with hardware manufacturers under embargo; well before Intel launched "Coffee Lake." Their findings were made public on January 3, 2018.
Intel's engineers would have had sufficient time to understand the severity of the vulnerability, as "Coffee Lake" is essentially the same micro-architecture as "Kaby Lake" and "Skylake." As one security researcher puts it, this could affect Intel's liability when 8th generation Core processor customers decide on a class-action lawsuit. As if that wasn't worse, "Skylake" and later micro-architectures could require micro-code updates in addition to OS kernel patches to work around the vulnerabilities. The three micro-architectures are expected to face a performance-hit, despite Intel extracting colorful statements from its main cloud-computing customers that performance isn't affected "in the real-world." The company was also well aware of Spectre and Meltdown before its CEO dumped $22 million in company stock and options (while investors and the SEC were unaware of the vulnerabilities).
Intel's engineers would have had sufficient time to understand the severity of the vulnerability, as "Coffee Lake" is essentially the same micro-architecture as "Kaby Lake" and "Skylake." As one security researcher puts it, this could affect Intel's liability when 8th generation Core processor customers decide on a class-action lawsuit. As if that wasn't worse, "Skylake" and later micro-architectures could require micro-code updates in addition to OS kernel patches to work around the vulnerabilities. The three micro-architectures are expected to face a performance-hit, despite Intel extracting colorful statements from its main cloud-computing customers that performance isn't affected "in the real-world." The company was also well aware of Spectre and Meltdown before its CEO dumped $22 million in company stock and options (while investors and the SEC were unaware of the vulnerabilities).
111 Comments on Intel Released "Coffee Lake" Knowing it Was Vulnerable to Spectre and Meltdown
But hell no, you can’t blame Intel for Spectre vulnerability. It affects ALL modern processors with speculative execution and is simply impossible to fix (unless every app developer cooperates). The only way we currently know is to drop speculative execution and get back to stone age (80x86). We need another breakthrough in computer science in the following years to fix it.
Was AMD aware of Spectre when they released Ryzen Mobile in November? :-)
This really is a serious issue, but this panic is totally pointless. The reason why there is an embargo after a bug/flaw is found, is to give companies time to fix it before the problem goes public and media make a mess of it.
The most possible outcome now is that this whole situation will rush companies into releasing precooked fixes (so soon we'll get fixes to fixes).
The leak of the backdoors is however undesirable to the organizations and hackers that use the backdoors on a daily basis.
Given that 4 independent research groups happened to find all this shit at the same exact time... this was a tip-off/retiring of a backdoor due to impending leak.
(without the leaked backdoors)
Intel Management Engine (ME) cannot be switched off
AMD's Platform Security Processor （PSP) it uses an ARM processor..... can be switched off in BIOS, but can it actually be switched off in hardware level?
Scary.....
may just be retiring some leaked backdoors..... retiring some leaked backdoors...
main investors have both AMD and Intel shares
boosting AMD for balancing the CPU market, dramas and competitions are needed to boost sales.
All in the name for the greater good