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Locks often offer a lifetime warranty against manufacturing defects in their locks. Is this a manufacturing defect in CPUs? (The defect is baked into hard sil
by floatingatoll 7y ago
Locks often offer a lifetime warranty against manufacturing defects in their locks.
Is this a manufacturing defect in CPUs?
(The defect is baked into hard silicon out in the world, so the analogy is plausible.)
- dymk 7y agoIt’s not a defect, so the analogy doesn’t work
- vorpalhex 7y agoHow is hyperthreading being insecure not a defect?
- dymk 7y agoA new technique to pick locks is discovered. Does that mean all locks are defective?
- vorpalhex 7y agoWhen the Kaba Simplex (a commercial door lock) was discovered to be easily bypassed by holding a magnet near it, yes, it was in fact a design defect and the company had to correct it by giving repair kits out to purchasers.
- dymk 7y agoIntel and others did give out a repair kit; they give you the option of disabling hyperthreading and a whole host of other optimizations. Those optimizations are both what provides this new side-channel of attack, and an immense speedup when they're enabled. You can't have one without the other.
- vorpalhex 7y agoExcept they didn't advertise that way. They advertised the hyperthreaded performance, without disclosing its security implications.
- dymk 7y agoYou're asking for something impossible. Lock manufacturers can't advertise that their locks are hardened against specific yet-to-be-discovered attacks. Intel can't advertise that their CPUs are hardened against specific yet-to-be-discovered attacks. They can only provide mitigations after the fact.
- Forbo 7y agoYet they are still advertising the number of threads without any mention of the vulnerabilities involved, well after those vulnerabilities have been disclosed. It's deceptive advertising at best.
- andoriyu 7y agoExcept lock buyers still go the door lock and in case of intel you lost threads.
- toast0 7y agoThis is a design defect, not a manufacturing defect. In case of design defects in highly regulated fields (cars), there is often a campaign to make things right. When Intel processors couldn't divide properly, they had a campaign to replace them. In this case, it looks like we're not getting much.