To be honest, they're saying two things which are both simultaneously true: * you can access information that, by design, the processor would ordinarily preven

To be honest, they're saying two things which are both simultaneously true: * you can access information that, by design, the processor would ordinarily prevent access to * the fault is not a flaw or bug, but inherent in the design of the processor The intent of the design was to keep the information secure, and the features of the design to do that are working as intended. Other features of the design, intended to increase performance, are also working correctly, but turn out to leak information in certain circumstances. There's no clear analogy in the physical world I can think of, but I don't think this is weasel-speak. Exfiltration of data accidentally through a side-channel, like here, is very difficult to design against.