Just saw this from Tom's Hardware:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/new-spectre-exploits-avoid-all-mitigations-fixes-to-degrade-performance

While the article tries to offer some good news - that this type of exploit is so difficult it is likely to be limited to targeted operations by nation-state actors...

the main thrust is that nearly all chips are vulnerable, existing mitigations don't stop these new attacks (on micro-op caches), and the remedies to them would severely impact performance.

John Savard

On Saturday, May 1, 2021 at 5:29:46 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
> Just saw this from Tom's Hardware:
>
> https://www.tomshardware.com/news/new-spectre-exploits-avoid-all-mitigations-fixes-to-degrade-performance
>
> While the article tries to offer some good news - that this type of exploit is so difficult it is likely to be limited to targeted operations by nation-state actors...
>
> the main thrust is that nearly all chips are vulnerable, existing mitigations don't stop these new attacks (on micro-op caches), and the remedies to them would severely impact performance.
>
> John Savard
<
Basically, the buying public only cares about price and performance, it does not care about security until someone creeps up from behind and whacks them on their (well deserving) head.

This is like the automotive keys we had in the 1950s and early 1960s, where you could take the key out of the lock in the 'on' position and the lock would not lock when the car was turned off.

Another big problem is that it takes $1B (or more:: way more) to get a new (safer) architecture up the learning curve and into products people want to buy.

Over on the side of the people currently having commanding positions in the market, they have no interest in fixing the security problems if it detracts from delivering more performance or lowering the prices consumers pay or delaying their schedules.

This may (MAY) be how WW3 starts........

On 5/1/2021 3:29 PM, Quadibloc wrote:
> Just saw this from Tom's Hardware:
>
> https://www.tomshardware.com/news/new-spectre-exploits-avoid-all-mitigations-fixes-to-degrade-performance
>
> While the article tries to offer some good news - that this type of exploit is so difficult it is likely to be limited to targeted operations by nation-state actors...
>
> the main thrust is that nearly all chips are vulnerable, existing mitigations don't stop these new attacks (on micro-op caches), and the remedies to them would severely impact performance.
>
> John Savard
>

Yet another attack that Mill is immune to.

On Saturday, May 1, 2021 at 6:28:11 PM UTC-5, Ivan Godard wrote:
> >
> Yet another attack that Mill is immune to.
<
With all these Spectré-like attack strategies, I am left wondering is ASIDs
could be an avenue of attack ?!?