>Yaron co-founded CTS-Labs in 2017, and previously served as an intelligence analyst in the Israeli Intelligence Corps Unit 8200. He is also the founder and Managing Director of NineWells Capital, a hedge fund that invests in public equities internationally. He holds a B.A. and M.A. from Yale University.
Could something like this be considered inside information? Or is it legal to actively manipulate stock prices to ones benefit in this way?
No, illegal insider trading refers to trading on inside information when you have a confidentiality agreement or a fiduciary duty. Information asymmetry is insufficient (or else it would be virtually impossible to profitably trade at all).
> Or is it legal to actively manipulate stock prices to ones benefit in this way?
The way you're presenting this is a false dichotomy. It's not "manipulating" stock prices except insofar as people broadcast news all the time which alters stock prices. Strictly speaking, it's not market manipulation if it's true. If it's false, it can be, which is why you really try not to do it unless it's true.
As far as I can see this is only an exploit of secure boot if you are already on ring 0 level auth. Making a whole webpage with lots of graphics and whatnot, sending press releases all over and in general present it like a security flaw on the level of meltdown seems .. false?
Probably court level material.. In any case it seems to have backfired as the stock is up.
Maybe not technically a short squeeze (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_squeeze) but related?
It feels slimy and gross.
If the news pushing a stock price is so misleading that it's categorically different from the truth, then I could see a case for market manipulation being brought against them. But I doubt that will happen, because unfortunately people have broad latitude to portray vulnerabilities however they'd like as long as they're convincingly authentic.
I guess that's my question. If you take a true statement and put it out with connotations that it's actually a terribly thing and worse than it is, just being "true" doesn't matter. Stupid analogy, say you go to a bakery and buy bread, then it goes stale in two hours or so by the time you get home. Then you go and write a negative yelp review that this bakery is terrible at baking and they sell subpar bread. You just don't know that the bakery doesn't bake in preservatives that bread you buy from the supermarket does. And it certainly isn't like the bakery is selling spoiled/poisoned bread or selling rocks painted to look like bread loaves.
Seems a bit shady in any case if one were to do this in the same way as when companies pay researchers to make claims publicly that benefit the company like the process leading up to the banning of led in petrol etc.
It’s also not market manipulation to publish factual information or opinions. Only knowingly publishing false information would qualify.
If I was the tinfoil hat type I'd guess that Intel is trying to spread FUD but maybe it's just security researchers trying to generate a bit of buzz for their company at the expense of AMD.
[1] https://www.amdflaws.com/ [2] https://safefirmware.com/amdflaws_whitepaper.pdf