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Yet another Intel CPU security vulnerability!

I mean 242 is quite a lot, I wonder how many of those 10,000 software engineers are now working on trying to write all the wrongs out of the silicon. 242 low level exploits seems like a mountain to climb and that's only the publicly disclosed ones? You can bet your ass that they are sitting there questioning that bounty programme about now.

I am one of the luckier ones as I don't actually own or maintain any Intel silicon that is vulnerable any more. I've done my bit and jumped ship for pretty much everything. I still have 50 ish 8th/9th gen i5's but everything else is either Epyc, Threadripper or Ryzen (mostly 2400ge) Based. I only have the Intel machines because my distys was pushing massive discounts on Intel desktop boxes so the 8500 was coming in cheaper than a ryzen pro based box. Where it matters at the core Epyc is doing the business.
 
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Vince said:
You can bet your ass that they are sitting there questioning that bounty programme about now.
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Paying people 10s of thousands of dollars to make their CPUs look bad heh. They've double down on it expanding the program though since some of these vulnerabilities started to come to light.
 
Rroff said:
Paying people 10s of thousands of dollars to make their CPUs look bad heh. They've double down on it expanding the program though since some of these vulnerabilities started to come to light.
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Exactly, In itself the bounty programme is a good idea but when the problems become so wide spread and deeply ingrained in a product it becomes a massive burden. Also they disclosed the incentive and where there is money... Mind you I wonder how many of the people that disclose that aren't part of another company (security or otherwise) end up working for Intel.
 
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Rroff said:
Paying people 10s of thousands of dollars to make their CPUs look bad heh. They've double down on it expanding the program though since some of these vulnerabilities started to come to light.
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You forgot to add the signing of an NDA for those people to able to collect those 10's of thousands of dollars.............................................in any other form of business it would be called bribery, and in any financial institution it would be called corruption.
 
kitfit1 said:
You forgot to add the signing of an NDA for those people to able to collect those 10's of thousands of dollars.............................................in any other form of business it would be called bribery, and in any financial institution it would be called corruption.
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Be a messy situation if they didn't - theoretically gives them time to find a fix for serious security issues before those issues are exploited in the wild. In many other industries it would be overseen by an "independent" 3rd party though to try and prevent corruption, etc.
 
LMAO

I no longer have to try and justify an Intel cpu to myself and I'm glad I'll no longer have to wonder about what security issue that ruins performance will show up next.

A security patch that destroys the CPu's overclocking potential also means Intel just lost a whole lot of gaming performance.

My 3950x is only a few days away now
 
Grim5 said:
LMAO

I no longer have to try and justify an Intel cpu to myself and I'm glad I'll no longer have to wonder about what security issue that ruins performance will show up next.

A security patch that destroys the CPu's overclocking potential also means Intel just lost a whole lot of gaming performance.

My 3950x is only a few days away now
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To be fair number of people who are going to be utilising SGX enclaves and gaming is going to be pretty small.

I'd never give my own money to AMD anyhow but one of the pieces of software I use most often was compiled with Intel optimisations and to take best advantage of HT and doesn't run well on AMD unless you disable SMT (and the developer has long disappeared). so I'll be sticking with Intel for awhile in my own machines - fortunately I don't currently do anything public facing server wise like I used to.
 
LoadsaMoney said:
Update incoming, stops overclocking.
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Widely reported 3 days before this video was posted:
Intel is “working with system manufacturers to provide a balance between performance and security for platforms that support overclocking of unlocked processors,” an Intel representative said in an email. On processors—such as Intel’s K-series chips—the preference may be set to allow voltages to be modified.

“We expect limited overlap between use cases where Intel SGX and overclocking are both relevant,” the representative added, however, probably meaning that there’s little chance that the average PC user will be affected. In the case that the mitigation is applied, however, Intel’s XTU tuning utility will not allow voltage changes from the default.
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So it is sounding like software voltage adjustment will be disabled when SGX is enabled. But voltage will still be adjustable in BIOS. SGX is required for playback of 4K UHD Blu-Ray, but little else on home PCs.
 
IT Troll said:
So it is sounding like software voltage adjustment will be disabled when SGX is enabled. But voltage will still be adjustable in BIOS. SGX is required for playback of 4K UHD Blu-Ray, but little else on home PCs.
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Wasn't aware it was required for that - I pretty much stream or use a dedicated device for 4K/UHD blu-ray these days. Having a quick google seems a lot of non-server/workstation platforms have problems even supporting it for blu-ray so seems an odd requirement though doesn't surprise me.
 
Rroff said:
Wasn't aware it was required for that - I pretty much stream or use a dedicated device for 4K/UHD blu-ray these days.
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Yeah, 4K UHD playback is completely messed up on PC. You need an expensive official drive (with an AACS 2 chip), an Intel CPU with SGX and use the iGPU (not a discreet GPU). You also need the software which costs about the same as a dedicated player. Needless to say, AMD isn't supported at all. It is DRM gone mad.
 
IT Troll said:
Yeah, 4K UHD playback is completely messed up on PC. You need an expensive official drive (with an AACS 2 chip), an Intel CPU with SGX and use the iGPU (not a discreet GPU). You also need the software which costs about the same as a dedicated player. Needless to say, AMD isn't supported at all. It is DRM gone mad.
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I don't know anyone who still has a disc drive in their PC. I suspect Blu-Ray discs will wonder off into oblivion sooner rather than later anyway
 
Grim5 said:
I don't know anyone who still has a disc drive in their PC. I suspect Blu-Ray discs will wonder off into oblivion sooner rather than later anyway
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Well I do. Still useful for converting physical into digital. Streaming is convenient but can't match the quality of physical (especially for 4K). Then you have issues like Ultraviolet/Flixster closing down.
 
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