3 ms·
Are you claiming to have prior knowledge and academic precedent for Meltdown?
by garmaine 9y ago
Are you claiming to have prior knowledge and academic precedent for Meltdown?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- girvo 9y agoA couple of people do, if I recall correctly.
- Bartweiss 9y agoI definitely remember rumblings about "Branch prediction runs code outside normal execution? There's got to be a security hole there somewhere." That sentiment was common enough that it's certainly not hard to imagine someone sketching the shape of an actual attack with it before the detailed proof came down the line.
- lifeisstillgood 9y agoBasically, yes :-) https://www.daemonology.net/hyperthreading-considered-harmful/ https://www.daemonology.net/hyperthreading-considered-harmfu... http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2018-01-17-some-thoughts-on-spectre-and-meltdown.html http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2018-01-17-some-thoughts-on-... A 2005 paper presented is linked, where he demonstrated such an attack and worked with the usual people to implement fixes. In fairness to cperciva he clearly distinguished his work from Meltdown/Spectre - "These new attacks use the same basic mechanism, but exploit an entirely new angle." I think that since the world was surprised by how bad it really was in practise, its fair to say cperciva (as well as others) predicted the explosion, but not necessarily the timing or the blast radius. There are I am sure many other papers in corners of the net that explain the next one to come bite us. PS cperciva was the Security Officer for FreeBSD and tends to know more about this stuff than the average bear. (Again HN shows its ability to have someone with truly detailed knowledge just one comment away.) NB _ I may have some details wrong, please correct if needed.