I look at spectre as a proof that low hanging fruit of software bugs is finally getting picked. Theoretical knowledge of these kinds of bugs goes back for deca

I look at spectre as a proof that low hanging fruit of software bugs is finally getting picked. Theoretical knowledge of these kinds of bugs goes back for decades, but nobody bothered to look for them in practice. Why would you, when most programs contain enough invalid pointers to hack them at will. But the state of the art has advanced, so now people start looking at other stuff. Integer overflow are another example of a class of bugs ignored for a long time.