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Back when Intel introduced the 80286, they didn't quite document everything right away. Errata were needed. Then the 80386 changed things. And then someone convinced them to add just one more feature at the last minute, which didn't get documented properly again.
The History of a Security Hole takes a look at the problems introduced by the I/O Permission Bitmap (IOPB) in the 80286, and how fallout from the implementation caused a security hole in all versions of OpenBSD up to 6.3 and NetBSD up to 4.4.
Conclusion? This programming thing is hard.
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kernel, n.:
A part of an operating system that preserves the medieval
traditions of sorcery and black art.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Saturday September 08 2018, @01:14AM
I should add, back then not even assembly languages were standardized. I worked for a company that had Kontron compilers, linkers, and, um, don't remember what they were called but they were essentially early JTAG ports. A cable went from the Kontron to the CPU socket, the Kontron debugger actually emulated the CPU (this crapped out mid 80s, CPUs got too fast for the signals to go through the cable).
Everything was written in 8086 assembly. Around '84 or so Kontron decided to switch to the Intel assembly format. Biggie was things like "mv a, b" turned into "mv b, a". And other various syntax "fixes" to match Intel.
I got tasked to convert our assembly codebase, which turned into about 100k executable code, into Intel format. That is how I turned into an awk expert. Took me 2-3 months, looking back it may have helped to learn yex/lacc, but that would have taken 2-3 months so I call it a wash.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.