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[...] Recently, security researchers have found that some innovations have let secrets flow freely out of computer hardware the same way software vulnerabilities have led to cyberattacks and data breaches. The best known recent examples were the chip flaws nicknamed Spectre and Meltdown that affected billions of computers, smartphones and other electronic devices. On July 10, researchers announced they discovered new variants of those flaws exploiting the same fundamental leaks in the majority of microprocessors manufactured within the last 20 years.
This realization has led to calls from microchip industry leaders, including icons John Hennessy and David Patterson, for a complete rethinking of computer architecture to put security first. I have been a researcher in the computer architecture field for 15 years – as a graduate student and professor, with stints in industry research organizations – and conduct research in power-management, microarchitecture and security. It's not the first time designers have had to reevaluate everything they were doing. However, this awakening requires a faster and more significant change to restore users' trust in hardware security without ruining devices' performance and battery life.
Is Open Hardware the answer?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Friday July 20 2018, @02:34AM
Once again we see that security was not the top priority, or such a huge security hole as Spectre could never have slid by for _20_ years. They knew it could be possible but chose not to investigate. Didn't want to do anything that might reduce performance, even when they went all security Nazi and put on a big act.
Over and over, we see performance, or convenience or money quietly put ahead of security. Just look at all the crap that's possible in C, all kinds of things not checked, because performance. And who actually uses SELinux? And I mean, really uses it, not just runs SELinux in such a disabled, open state it might as well not be present?
But seems everyone still feels they have to act like nothing is more important than security. Why, just suggesting there could be more important things than preventative security is practically treason. Be good to get that lie exposed.
However, having said all that, I certainly would prefer a system that is not vulnerable to Spectre, if the price is not too high. That is, I'm not going to dig up an old mid 1990s era 32bit 133Mhz Pentium system, stuff it with 256M of RAM (64M was considered a good amount then) and make that my primary computer, just to avoid Spectre. Way too big a performance hit from today's 64bit multicore machines with 10 times or more the memory. A 1% hit to performance to stop Spectre, yes, a 50% or greater hit, no way.