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A comment on Intel Issues Updates to Protect Systems from Security Exploits. Parent comment

Re:Intel Issues Updates to Protect Systems from Security Exp... by syrrim on Thursday January 04, 2018 @05:48PM (#16074849)
Design choices don't need patches to fix them. Flaws and bugs do.

You seem to think that this issue is inherent to speculative execution - it is not. It is due to intel performing speculative execution in a flawed way. In particular, an incorrect branch prediction should have no detectable effect on the system, whereas here it does.

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Re:Intel Issues Updates to Protect Systems from Security Exp... by anifal on Friday January 05, 2018 @01:06AM (#16076886)
> an incorrect branch prediction should have no detectable effect on the system, whereas here it does

Branch prediction is not scoped for that. Branch prediction will always change microarchitecture state, which is always detectable at some level or another. The key takeaway for designers should be that even though microarchitecture state is not exposed in the datapath it is not secured from side channel exposure.

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