5 ms·
> if the security model was clearly leaking at that point The leak is only clear in retrospect. Many, many things are only clear after you see how they were do
by compiler-guy 9y ago
> if the security model was clearly leaking at that point
The leak is only clear in retrospect. Many, many things are only clear after you see how they were done.
It has been twenty years since processors with this vulnerability started appearing. Over those two decades, thousands of very smart engineers (including state-sponsored ones) have collectively spent millions of hours of analysis trying to find security flaws.
No one has found such a clever timing attack until now. So "clearly leaking" wasn't "clearly leaking" until this week.
- blattimwind 9y ago> The leak is only clear in retrospect. Many, many things are only clear after you see how they were done. However, even at the time of the design it would have been obvious that deferring security checks is a risky design choice.
- PeterisP 9y agoNo one has reported such clever timing attack until now. There's no reason to suppose that such an attack hasn't been used by nationstate actors for, say, a year already.
- krylon 9y agoColin Percival found a similar problem with Intel's implementation of "HyperThreading" back in 2005: http://www.daemonology.net/hyperthreading-considered-harmful/ http://www.daemonology.net/hyperthreading-considered-harmful...