In 2013, James Mickens reported, that “the branches made a pact with Satan and quantum mechanics [and] cast evil spells on future generations of processors”. It took little less than five years for the first CPU side-channel attacks come to light, and today it takes a team of Monk Pwnies just to keep track of SA’s, CVE’s, logos, and even songs for the different side CPU channels (other vendors are handled by Pinkie Pie (the pony, not Comex)). And although our trusted librarians found that Intel knew about most of the problems well ahead, we can only watch the sewer overflow every other month, without the slightest idea of when and how this mess will get cleaned up. So far, the strategy seems to work: most customers can’t care less about the version X of the Nth esoteric attack on a CPU feature that makes your idealized CISC seem like a RISC. Anyway, these are just the things that separate user from kernel, guest from host, LinkedIn from OnlyFans. Why are you concerned if you have nothing to hide? Nothing to see here, move along!
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