3 ms·

The basics of the spectre exploit were discoverable 20 years ago and run deep, to the very core of branch speculation. This is nothing but marketing for risc-v

The basics of the spectre exploit were discoverable 20 years ago and run deep, to the very core of branch speculation. This is nothing but marketing for risc-v and rambus, there's no magic in risc-v that prevents spectre except that the ecosystem is so primitive that they barely have any speculative processors... We could have found the spectre exploit 20 years ago. To me, the fact that we didn't until now is maybe the most interesting thing.

userbinator 8y ago
To me, the fact that we didn't until now is maybe the most interesting thing. I suspect it's because there was still plenty of far simpler and more obvious exploits to look at.
ufo 8y ago
I think one of the reasons is that nowadays we run a lot more untrusted code on top of our hardware, due to things like Javascript and virtualization. Meltdown and Spectre would not be as dangerous 20 years ago.
blattimwind 8y ago
> The basics of the spectre exploit were discoverable 20 years ago and run deep, to the very core of branch speculation. Some aspects of these were known 20 years ago. http://www.cse.psu.edu/~trj1/cse543-f06/papers/vax_vmm.pdf http://www.cse.psu.edu/~trj1/cse543-f06/papers/vax_vmm.pdf section VI.E)
segfaultbuserr 8y ago
> To me, the fact that we didn't until now is maybe the most interesting thing. Back then, people were smashing the stack for fun and profit. Think about it! Executable stack! No canary! No ASLR! Can't be more fun.