Vox Media website theverge.com reports that Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA) wants answers about the recent computer chip chaos.
Congress is starting to ask hard questions about the fallout from the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities. Today, Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA) sent a letter [(pdf)] requesting a briefing from Intel, AMD, and ARM about the vulnerabilities’ impact on consumers.
[...] The two vulnerabilities are “glaring warning signs that we must take cybersecurity more seriously,” McNerney argues in the letter. “Should the vulnerabilities be exploited, the effects on consumers’ privacy and our nation’s economy and security would be absolutely devastating.”
Privately disclosed to chipmakers in June of 2016, the Meltdown and Spectre bugs became public after a haphazard series of leaks earlier this month. In the aftermath, there have been significant patching problems, including an AMD patch that briefly prevented Windows computers from booting up. Intel in particular has come under fire for inconsistent statements about the impact of the bugs, and currently faces a string of proposed class-action lawsuits relating to the bugs.
Meltdown can be fixed through a relatively straightforward operating-system level patch, but Spectre has proven more difficult, and there have been significant patching problems in the aftermath. The most promising news has been Google’s Retpoline approach, which the company says can protect against the trickiest Spectre variant with little negative performance impact.
The letter calls on the CEOs of Intel, AMD, and ARM to answer (among other things) when they learned about these problems and what they are doing about it.
(Score: 4, Informative) by legont on Wednesday January 17 2018, @08:54PM (4 children)
It was Windows patch for Intel that broke perfectly good - for that particular bug anyway - AMD processors. AMD so far does not even have an exploitable issue - just a pure theoretical one - but it's being put into the same shithole or even implied as worst. Also, released patches slow down AMD without any value. An honest article should advise not to update AMD/Linux systems for now (and short Intel while buying AMD).
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @09:12PM (3 children)
It makes one wonder what NSA backdoors Intel chips have that AMD chips don't have. The press obviously does not want the public aware there are still two vendors for x86 chips.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by turgid on Wednesday January 17 2018, @09:30PM (2 children)
You credit the press with too much intelligence. Malice and stupidity and all that.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @11:05PM (1 child)
Just heard some media dipstick refer to an AT-6 as a jet. Where do they come up with some of these people?
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Thursday January 18 2018, @04:52PM
> Where do they come up with some of these people?
Journalism school, but they only keep the ones who get the most eye-grabbing articles to press the fastest. They get rid of the ones who waste time on pointless tasks like verifying information and seeking the truth.