3 ms·
Are we restricted to Intel here? Here is something for VAX, from 1992: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/213271/ http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/213271/
by carterehsmith 9y ago
Are we restricted to Intel here? Here is something for VAX, from 1992: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/213271/ http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/213271/
But to be honest, whether something was published 14 or 17 or 36 years ago... is kind of interesting, but only mildly so.
How about this question: was Intel aware of these publications?
If they were, then... what happened?
Or maybe they were not aware, or maybe someone was, but failed to communicate it to the right people, or maybe it was assigned JIRA x2399827348 and forgotten.
Wish we knew what happened.
- tptacek 9y agoIntel was absolutely aware of microarchitectural side-channel attacks before Spectre and Meltdown; an Intel employee (Onur Aciicmez) published the first branch predictor side channel paper (at least that I'm aware of).
- carterehsmith 9y agoUh-huh, ok. Thanks. BTW This is one of the papers, from 2005: http://cryptocode.net/docs/c36.pdf http://cryptocode.net/docs/c36.pdf So... interesting. Do they just leave this kind of stuff open so that NSA can use it for a while. Maybe so, but then, why are those things published in journals? Weird.
- tptacek 9y agoHere's the one I'm thinking of: https://eprint.iacr.org/2006/288.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2006/288.pdf
- fulafel 9y agoWhat would it mean for a corporation of this size to be aware of a highly specialized finding in the research literature? Intel has 100k+ employees, so it's quite likely that an Intel employee has read this paper, but what kind of effort and incentive does it take to successfully escalate this kind of thing to high enough that the ship turns? edit: apparently I just restated the latter part of your post, nevermind :)
- tptacek 9y agoI don't know. What would it take for an HN commenter to continue reading an HN thread before making suppositions about what Intel was and wasn't keeping track of?
- fulafel 9y agoAre you referring to the paper you mentioned by Onur Aciicmez ? I think the same kind of pondering about organizational awareness applies there.