News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on MIT researchers uncover ‘unpatchable’ flaw in Apple M1 chips. Parent comment

Re:MIT researchers uncover ‘unpatchable’ flaw in Apple M1 chips by MertsA on Friday June 10, 2022 @12:42PM (#31696470)
Yeah I hate this trend of naming vulnerabilities and pandering to the tech press. The CTS Labs FUD was just beyond the pale. Most tech journalism just ate up those claims that were clearly B.S. and not even self consistent. They were claiming it was impossible for AMD to patch with firmware or microcode but in the same sentence claiming an attacker could use it to create a rootkit that couldn't be removed. Nobody bothered taking two seconds to think critically about what they were publishing to realize they were claiming that it was, in essence, somehow possible for an attacker to "pull up the ladder behind them" but not for AMD.

Maybe this "unpatchable flaw" with the M1 has some more legitimacy than the "critical AMD vulnerabilities" back in 2018, but please, stop with the stupid trendy names for vulnerabilities. Lets discuss this on the technical merits and skip the marketing.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:MIT researchers uncover ‘unpatchable’ flaw in Apple M1 chips by virgulino on Friday June 10, 2022 @01:57PM (#31697354)
>Yeah I hate this trend of naming vulnerabilities and pandering to the tech press.

It is not a trend. It's a tradition:

Back Orifice. Ping of Death. Smurf Attack. Computer Viruses. Computer Worms. (Hello Robert Morris!)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:MIT researchers uncover ‘unpatchable’ flaw in Apple M1 chips by azinman2 on Friday June 10, 2022 @01:43PM (#31697209)
Actively marketing yourself and your ideas is one of the most important things you can do. Without, most people simply won’t know about it or will dismiss it. Just because you market it, doesn’t mean it’ll be successful - things still have to prove their worth regardless and will otherwise fizzle out.

How many important security vulnerabilities have just had technical white papers and no marketing have gotten wider coverage? Very, very few. It’s also very useful for humans to talk about something when given a short, memorable name.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:MIT researchers uncover ‘unpatchable’ flaw in Apple M1 chips by Apocryphon on Saturday June 11, 2022 @01:49PM (#31706437)
Heartbleed bug was a great name for this purpose, for motivating more towards fixing it.
[ Parent | on HN ]