This is probably one of the poorest and most defensive PR pieces I've read from a company in a long time, and it does not really make me sympathetic to them at all.
> 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.
Nicely done. Words like 'is' incur liability because it can be interpreted as making factual statements that you could be held accountable for. Hurry, get your law degree so you can skin Intel alive ;)
My suspicion is they don't get sued; rather, Werner Vogels calls Intel and tells them the massive haircut / refund they're gonna take. Or Werner buys amd procs.
I could be wrong, but I take the "bug/flaw" language to mean this: the processor is doing exactly what it was designed to do (unlike the Pentium FDIV bug, for example). A new class of exploit was recently discovered, and these CPUs are vulnerable to this new exploit. But there was no bug in how these CPUs were implemented, and the only design flaw is that they failed to withstand a new class of exploit that was not known at the time they were designed.
(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.
It's kind of semantics though isn't it? If I write a piece of software that follows the spec and fulfils the customer's need, but then someone tries to do something with it that we hadn't thought of and that results in a security hole... around here we call that a bug, a flaw, something we missed. Maybe it's reasonable to have not spotted the bug, but that wouldn't make it not a bug/flaw.
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...)
Since we're being semantic about things, lets be clear that when someone says it's all "semantics" they mean that the person is engaging in a semantic dispute. This is a type of argument that has a specific meaning-
> 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.
> When someone is "arguing semantics" they are often trying to obfuscate the original issue being discussed.
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.
> ...you cannot seriously expect this to be a convincing argument without offering your own kosher definition (read: semantics) of "bug".
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.
Shoot, apologies for that, this was a silly reading error on my part... I quickly read that comment while outside and didn't realize 'redcalx' was referring to the user above, and instead somehow my brain just glossed over that part as a typo.
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.
Yeah I agree there is a line there somewhere. If someone sells you a safe and it can be opened with a ballpoint pen, that seems like a flaw. If someone sells you a safe and it can be opened with a military grade laser, that's sort of expected. If someone sells you a safe and it can be opened with a cheap consumer gadget, but that gadget is complex and was unforeseen when the safe was designed, what do you say about that? The last one seems like the closest analogy.
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."
I was about to say something like, "Well, in a broad sense they introduced protection features to x86 to prevent modification or disclosure of memory contents across process boundaries...and that's broken, therefore 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.
I think that analogy paints a pretty clear picture, this is a flaw because it's undesirable behavior in unexpected circumstances. A bug is unexpected behavior in expected use-cases.
> I guess overall I think this is fair to call a "flaw" but not a "bug."
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.
My limited understanding is that the vulnerability is due to kernel memory protections not being applied during speculative execution, when the CPU is trying to second guess what the next instructions might be.
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.
I do not think the processor was designed to improperly unwind from speculative execution, such that the state after failed speculation is not identical to the state prior to speculation.
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.
In the case of asymmetric competition, a company with vastly more resources might curate a list of undisclosed problems with competitors' products, for when a major event like this strikes, they can drag along the underdogs. The optics are different if 1) the dominant player can pretend it's "working together" with the other vendors, 2) the dominant player condescendingly points out mildly related issues in competitors' product, and 3) the name of the alternatives keeps getting linked in a "we're in the same boat" way.
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.
I feel like a lot of really smart people are really naive about public relations.
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.
> This is deceptive. It immediately mentions AMD to give the impression that AMD also suffer from the problem.
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]
From what I can gather, one of the 3 issues found is Intel-only, very bad and very easy to exploit, and can be patched with a large performance hit.
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.
Reading the Meltdown paper [1], it's not clear why I keep seeing people say it's Intel only. The paper says quite clearly that other vendors' processors could be affected:
"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."
> "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....
>...pointing out what the exploits cannot do (corrupt/modify/delete).
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 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.
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:
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 patch that was under question was related to a workaround for Meltdown, which makes AMD's note regarding the lack of necessity in agreement with the paper.
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.
I am going to go on a limb and speculate that Intel probably knows more about this problem than most. They are being quite specific that the issue affects multiple devices, and I doubt they are lying. And coincidentally several other reports (from Google, Wired and others) are indicating that this issue crosses CPU makers.
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.
"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.
> 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.
They also stated it does not have the potential to cause deletion, modification or corruption which directly contradicts the "malicious purposes" statement.
> They also stated it does not have the potential to cause deletion, modification or corruption which directly contradicts the "malicious purposes" statement.
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.
Formally it is a bug in the spec, so indeed Intel products performs as designed. What is deceptive in the first part that the text does not tell that the design and specs were also done by Intel.
Intel should now recall the affected CPUs and ship new fixed CPUs without Intel "ME" for Management Engine, another well known open flaw.
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.