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I can't imagine better marketing for cloud services than making it as clear as you can that the world is a very dangerous place for computers and if you don't h

I can't imagine better marketing for cloud services than making it as clear as you can that the world is a very dangerous place for computers and if you don't have a crack team of hundreds of battle-hardened security engineers then you have no business hooking your computers up to the internet.

walterbell 9y ago
If true, how are edge computers going to connect to the cloud?
- ebikelaw 9y ago
  Chromebooks, obv. Integrated marketing strategy!
  - btian 9y ago
    Also Android
jopsen 9y ago
Hmm, or maybe it's a reason to go with bare-metal providers :)
snowwrestler 9y ago
The irony here is that a good ol' dedicated hardware web server is far less susceptible to Meltdown or Spectre than Google Cloud, because only your code is running on the CPUs. I predict tonight's disclosures will lead to an uptick in interest in running websites on dedicated hardware, like we did back at the turn of the century.
- tanilama 9y ago
  > Spectre Spectre doesn't really care if it is cloud or bare metal. They are equally vulnerable unless disconnected from internet.
  - Godel_unicode 9y ago
    Pretty hard to have a neighbor vm execute Spectre on your same physical server if you have dedicated hardware. Add in that Spectre specifically is a js bug so in order to be vulnerable your server would need to execute untrusted JavaScript and I think we can assume the threat surface of this specific bug is smaller outside the cloud...
    - cthalupa 9y ago
      I don't think you understand the bug here. 1) https://spectreattack.com/ https://spectreattack.com/: "Spectre tricks other applications into accessing arbitrary locations in their memory. " Spectre does not let you execute code in another guest 2) Spectre is not javascript specific. I am not sure why you think it is, beyond the fact a PoC was written in js
      - Godel_unicode 9y ago
        I don't think you understand my point. You should reread my post, especially the first sentence. It's first and alone for a reason; not sharing hardware is an effective mitigation against vulnerabilities in shared hardware. Obviously it's not just a js bug, there are other PoCs in other languages. I never said anything about executing code in another guest, not sure where you got that from.
        TickleSteve 9y ago
        Spectre is exploitable from processes, not just containers.... containers are equivalent to processes from it's point-of-view as the kernel is shared. So... you may be able to go native to avoid having neighbours, but this does not prevent other processes exploiting your process. To do that you need to prevent any downloadable code from running. This of course is possible and is the entire reason why the ARM document explains that most embedded systems are not affected due to the fact that they will not download and execute code (of any form).
        cthalupa 9y ago

walterbell 9y ago

If true, how are edge computers going to connect to the cloud?

ebikelaw 9y ago
Chromebooks, obv. Integrated marketing strategy!
- btian 9y ago
  Also Android

jopsen 9y ago

Hmm, or maybe it's a reason to go with bare-metal providers :)

snowwrestler 9y ago

The irony here is that a good ol' dedicated hardware web server is far less susceptible to Meltdown or Spectre than Google Cloud, because only your code is running on the CPUs. I predict tonight's disclosures will lead to an uptick in interest in running websites on dedicated hardware, like we did back at the turn of the century.

tanilama 9y ago
> Spectre Spectre doesn't really care if it is cloud or bare metal. They are equally vulnerable unless disconnected from internet.
- Godel_unicode 9y ago
  Pretty hard to have a neighbor vm execute Spectre on your same physical server if you have dedicated hardware. Add in that Spectre specifically is a js bug so in order to be vulnerable your server would need to execute untrusted JavaScript and I think we can assume the threat surface of this specific bug is smaller outside the cloud...
  - cthalupa 9y ago
    I don't think you understand the bug here. 1) https://spectreattack.com/ https://spectreattack.com/: "Spectre tricks other applications into accessing arbitrary locations in their memory. " Spectre does not let you execute code in another guest 2) Spectre is not javascript specific. I am not sure why you think it is, beyond the fact a PoC was written in js
    - Godel_unicode 9y ago
      I don't think you understand my point. You should reread my post, especially the first sentence. It's first and alone for a reason; not sharing hardware is an effective mitigation against vulnerabilities in shared hardware. Obviously it's not just a js bug, there are other PoCs in other languages. I never said anything about executing code in another guest, not sure where you got that from.
      - TickleSteve 9y ago
        Spectre is exploitable from processes, not just containers.... containers are equivalent to processes from it's point-of-view as the kernel is shared. So... you may be able to go native to avoid having neighbours, but this does not prevent other processes exploiting your process. To do that you need to prevent any downloadable code from running. This of course is possible and is the entire reason why the ARM document explains that most embedded systems are not affected due to the fact that they will not download and execute code (of any form).
      - cthalupa 9y ago