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Re:Spectre and the end of langsec by taneq on Thursday January 11, 2018 @08:03PM (#16129578)
> A program which executes deterministically cannot receive a timing channel!

Only if you define 'deterministically' to mean 'determined only by the program's own legitimately accessible context'. These timing side-channel attacks work precisely because the processor performs in a deterministic and detectable manner, but does so based on information which the attacking program should not be able to access.

Re:Spectre and the end of langsec by voidmain on Friday January 12, 2018 @08:46AM (#16132726)
No, hardware bugs could work like you describe, but Spectre/Meltdown does not make the result of executing a program depend on the results of speculative execution. It just makes timings depend on such results. If you can't time things, which a deterministic program can't (access to any real timer makes a program nondeterministic), you can set up spectre attacks but you can't receive the results.