And then as you say, they immediately mention AMD to imply that everyone has the issue, but they also avoid actually saying that.
Your excellent analysis of what they're really saying reminds me of user thaumaturgy's analysis of Adancing Our Amazing Bet[1].
"Intel believes its products are the most secure in the world [ . . . ]"
To add insult to this already cheap shot, it was flat out lies and AMD isn't vulnerable to all three variants.
This is just pathetic.
(I don't have any information that could confirm/deny this, it's just how I interpret their verbiage).
I don't get the sense that they are trying to deceptively contradict only part of the previous statement.
I never understood how this sentence became a defense. Yes, yes it is. It is semantics. Everything is semantics. The difference between getting fired and getting laid off is semantics, and everybody cares about it and recognizes it. The difference between "I'll pick you up at 5pm" and "I promise I will pick you up at 5pm even if my car breaks down and the train gets derailed" is semantics. Calling something "semantics" isn't a defense to your argument; it's often more like a concession. (And the difference between a defense and a concession is, as I'm sure you realize, also semantics...)
> A semantic dispute is a disagreement that arises if the parties involved disagree about the definition of a word or phrase, not because they disagree on material facts, but rather because they disagree on the definitions of a word (or several words) essential to formulating the claim at issue.
When someone is "arguing semantics" they are often trying to obfuscate the original issue being discussed.
In this specific case the argument is being made that Intel is trying to use a different meaning for the word "bug" that favors them. redcalx is then stating the general definition of "bug" in an attempt to point out how limiting and nonstandard their definition is.
Well (and the irony is not lost on me here), this wasn't part of the definition of a semantic dispute that you just presumably quoted... it was just something you tacked onto it afterward. And the entire problem is that to you a semantic dispute might imply the original issue is being obfuscated, whereas to the other person it might imply you are trying to stretch your own ideas to where they wouldn't apply.
Read your own definition: you said a semantic dispute is when they disagree on essential words. Not fluff words. People don't need to disagree on facts to have legitimate disagreements about about their interpretations and consequences. We all agree the CPU behaved in an undesirable way. There is no debate there, but that fact was insufficient to get us anywhere. What we disagree on is whether that is a "bug", which matters to all sides because it has consequences as who is to resolve the issue and how.
> In this specific case the argument is being made that Intel is trying to use a different meaning for the word "bug" that favors them.
[Edit: I misread part of the comment here; see below.]
If it's "unintended behavior", then, sure, the CPU has "bugs", but that's a pretty useless definition that gets you nowhere (especially legally). If it's "does not perform as specified", which at least to me is a more logical choice, then I'm afraid I have not seen a shred of evidence that they ever claimed memory contents are immune from CPU timing/cache/etc. effects.
It's kind of hilarious that the only reason you can claim this is because of your selective editing. The whole statement you are responding too is this-
> In this specific case the argument is being made that Intel is trying to use a different meaning for the word "bug" that favors them. redcalx is then stating the general definition of "bug" in an attempt to point out how limiting and nonstandard their definition is.
Since you missed it the first time redcalx is already making the argument for me. I don't need to supply a separate version of the definition, I just need you to read the original message you were responding too.
Disregard that part of my comment and look at all the rest of what I've actually been saying. The problem I have been trying to point out with the definition (as in the last comment, but I'll repeat here) is that the definition of a "bug" might be "just semantics" to you, but that doesn't make it irrelevant; those semantics make all the practical differences here. If you consider any undesirable behavior in unintended situations to be a "bug", then it sure sounds good, but won't get you anywhere, given that practically anything you buy can be used in weird ways with unforeseen (and hence unintended) consequences. If you consider a "bug" to be a deviation from the manufacturer's specified behavior, then it's obviously more limiting, but I would expect it's closer to the semantics a court would use to decide whether to hold the manufacturer responsible.
Another example: would you say that MD5 is buggy/flawed?
I guess overall I think this is fair to call a "flaw" but not a "bug."
However, looking at the reference manual for the 80386 [1], and a modern version of their x64 manual [2], they don't actually say it's for security:
Original: "6.1 Why Protection? The purpose of the protection features of the 80386 is to help detect and identify bugs. The 80386 supports sophisticated applications that may consist of hundreds or thousands of program modules..."
Modern: "The IA-32 architecture’s protection mechanism recognizes four privilege levels, numbered from 0 to 3, where a greater number mean less privilege. The reason to use privilege levels is to improve the reliability of operating systems."
So it's more like someone sells you a box with a lock on the front that looks a lot like a safe and all of the individual hinges and pins and whatnot are guaranteed to some degree, but they never actually say it's OK to lock your stuff inside.
[1]https://css.csail.mit.edu/6.858/2013/readings/i386.pdf
[2]https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-tec...
Yes I agree, it's not a bug in the sense of a silly mistake that slipped through development and testing. It's a flaw / attack-vector that no-one thought of... until now.
Unless you are in PR, any reasonable person would expect a CPU touted as having kernel memory protection to protect it under all circumstances. I'm sure that the people who wrote the speculative execution code would have included that protection had they thought of it, and all developers would class it's omission as a bug. So yes, this is yet another example of awful PR, trying to cover up a serious mistake with careful language that makes it seem not their fault.
My policy when I make a mistake is immediate disclosure, along with two commitments: to put the mistake right, and to amend processes to prevent similar mistakes in the future. It isn't clear how Intel can put this right, but perhaps a good discount on replacement parts might help. And they can certainly implement processes to catch such omissions in the future.
So this press release (particularly combined with reports of execs selling stock) are appalling. Intel have badly damaged their brand, and I'll never buy another Intel processor again.
But yeah, this an old discussion, and a deep rabbit hole. There's many layers to consider bugs at. Implementation can differ from developer intention, developer intention can differ from group agreement, group agreement can differ from design document, design document can differ from product development intention, and product development intention can differ from communicated functionality.
I'm betting this would be implementation differing from developer intention, although I would consider (almost) all of the above to be bugs.
I'm not suggesting this is the case here at all, as it's unlikely that Intel identified this precise issue with AMD long ago and haven't checked their own vulnerability (though there's always a chance that an issue is found by company A when analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of company B's products, which then turns out to apply for their own products too). But I wouldn't be surprised if somehow there were some loosely related AMD issues that came to light now, and it's impossible to tell if those would be current finds or older ones.
Given Intel's dominant position, they may come out ahead in P&L or gross margin terms even if it turns out to be a clearly Intel issue, as the perceived or real loss of performance may trigger an upgrade spree, sold unit counts inevitably dominated by Intel purchases.
AMD has just started to catch up in overall performance, and in the worst case bug impact to Intel, they may even get competitive single-threaded performance. Also, there has been speculation that Apple has been evaluating ARM processors for some future laptops, and a sudden drop of the baseline is an interesting turn of events.
While this in theory benefits the underdogs, financially Intel may well come out ahead due to their market hegemony.
PR exists to protect the company from the masses and the lawyers. We in the tech community should not waste time personalizing a response to pr communications. We are not the target market. It is the general public and politicians they are trying to persuade. If they ameliorate them, they win and can move on to the next fight.
They will play word games and fiddle with language. It is not worth responding to PR if you deeply understand the problem. You will only find problematic statements. You will never get satisfaction because satisfying the technical community is a fundamental error for anyone who knows what they are doing in public relations.
There are other venues for us. Patch notes and tech forums are worthy of your time.
It looks like (some?) AMD processors might be affected as well: "These vulnerabilities affect many CPUs, including those from AMD, ARM, and Intel, as well as the devices and operating systems running them."[1]
[1] https://security.googleblog.com/2018/01/todays-cpu-vulnerabi...
Another is harder to exploit, and has no known workaround (likely requiring new silicon to fix), and affects basically all micro-architectures in use today, including AMD's x86 silicon.
The third, I know nothing of.
I believe the Intel only issue is called "Meltdown" and the second is called "Spectre"; the attack website [1] has details of both.
"Instead, Meltdown exploits side-channel information available on most modern processors, e.g., modern Intel microarchitectures since 2010 and potentially on other CPUs of other vendors."
But their website faq says[0]: every Intel processor which implements out-of-order execution is potentially affected, which is effectively every processor since 1995 (except Intel Itanium and Intel Atom before 2013). .... Currently, we have only verified Meltdown on Intel processors....
That statement is also untrue if you follow the implicit issue to it's inevitable exploitable end... Here is an equivalent statement of equal absurdity that intentionally neglects causality:
"Our door lock design contains a bug. The bug does not make stuff in your house disappear, does not manifest junkies into the vicinity, nor does it make property spontaneously combust."
This is excellent analysis. I guess my follow up question is has there been anything to suggest that AMD/ARM are or are not vulnerable in a similar manner?
I read this as Intel trying to imply that other vendors weren't probed and/or may not have this specific design vulnerability but can still be vulnerable...which I consider a vapid statement designed to distract the reader.
True, when a 0-day is found and disclosed it doesn't mean that there aren't other 0-days that haven't been found yet...but that has no relation to the significance of the newly disclosed vulnerability.
I judge this statement even more harshly because the flaw is so serious it's under embargo until OS vendors can try to protect users. Additionally, AMD seems to have said their processors are not vulnerable (https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/12/27/2)...
Edit: Some more information from Google Project Zero:
https://security.googleblog.com/2018/01/todays-cpu-vulnerabi...
So maybe AMD and ARM are vulnerable?
Edit 2: So it seems there are two slightly different attacks along this vector: Spectre and Meltdown. From the Google article(s) it seems Spectre affects Intel, AMD, ARM while Meltdown only affects Meltdown. This would appear to contradict the AMD statement regarding their processors not being affected.
I am not hardware guy and information is still coming out...but I am judging this Intel press release slightly less harshly (although it still reads pretty vapid).
The Spectre paper seems to be a bit less specific on how platforms might differ under explotation but very clearly states that it was verified to be possible. Workarounds for that problem will likely be much more application specific from what I can tell, but I have only skimmed that paper so far.
In that context, isn't you reply rather off the mark? If Intel's claim is correct, then being "defensive" seems entirely accurate given how many are foaming at the mouth at the prospect of some mortally wounded Intel.
https://www.wired.com/story/critical-intel-flaw-breaks-basic...
That’s the most concerning thing then
"No problem here, move along, move along - you won't be able to modify/corrupt/delete that password, you can only read it in plain text. Nothing to see. Move on."
IIUC - you can transpose 'password' with seemingly anything stored in memory managed by the kernel, so Intel using this sort of deceptive language is poor behaviour.
Intel wasn't being deceptive. That is exactly what they said, "software analysis methods that, when used for malicious purposes, have the potential to improperly gather sensitive data." This is in the very first sentence of their response.
You are mixing two different notions.
In security CIA = Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability.
Intel said that Confidentiality is broken by a security analysis applied maliciously (i.e. exploit), but Integrity is not. The general belief is that Availability is affected, due to a slowdown that depends on the workload.
Unless you view a key or password... then use it to corrupt, modify or delete data.
In the end, hardware and software devs in the 1970s were right. Operating systems like MULTICS and computers like PDP-11 got it right. MULTICS supported 16 rings and has many advanced features that almost everyone forgot and never implemented in newer OS - shame on all of us!
Intel CPUs barely support more than 2.5 rings (if you count the VT that just blowed up). Also operating systems need to now focus on supporting more rings too. Just 2 rings aka kernel and usermode (and VT supervisor as third) is NOT enough in 2018.
> Intel and other technology companies have been made aware of new security research describing software analysis methods that, when used for malicious purposes, have the potential to improperly gather sensitive data from computing devices that are operating as designed. Intel believes these exploits do not have the potential to corrupt, modify or delete data.
This is deceptive. It very quickly acknowledge the confidentiality aspect, but then claims that is "operating as designed" and then immediacy try to damage control by pointing out what the exploits cannot do (corrupt/modify/delete).
> Recent reports that these exploits are caused by a “bug” or a “flaw” and are unique to Intel products are incorrect. Based on the analysis to date, many types of computing devices — with many different vendors’ processors and operating systems — are susceptible to these exploits.
This is deceptive. In the first sentence it combines two statements: 1) bug/flaw in Intel products and 2) that it is unique to Intel. In the rest of the paragraph it then claims that the previous statements are incorrect, but only addressing the second point.
> Intel is committed to product and customer security and is working closely with many other technology companies, including AMD, ARM Holdings and several operating system vendors, to develop an industry-wide approach to resolve this issue promptly and constructively. Intel has begun providing software and firmware updates to mitigate these exploits. Contrary to some reports, any performance impacts are workload-dependent, and, for the average computer user, should not be significant and will be mitigated over time.
This is deceptive. It immediately mentions AMD to give the impression that AMD also suffer from the problem.
It then goes on with a straw man about performance impacts ("contrary to some reports").
And then mentions "average computer user" whereas the real problem is obviously not average computer users. Again, deceptive.