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How Tier 2 cloud vendors banded together to cope with Spectre and Meltdown

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Re: How Tier 2 cloud vendors banded together to cope with Spectre and Meltdown

#41

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

Aloha wrote: post #40
mschuster91 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why? Because the fallout will cost billions over the next years. Intel as a company due to class-action lawsuits, recalls, rebates, and the shareholders because the drop in stock value after the announcement will cost them quite a chunk of money. In addition, more long-term, I sincerely hope that the cloud vendors (and maybe even Apple!) recognize that their total dependence on Intel (and NVIDIA in deep learning...…

The intel CEO took over in 2012 - some of these vulnerabilities go back as far as the Pentium Pro (Meltdown) and the other one, effects (I believe) as far back as the original Pentium (Spectre) - why would you fire someone for something that happened under a predecessors leadership (Andy Grove, in this case was CEO when the Meltdown attack was added) - it makes no sense - I see nothing here that doesnt jive up with s…

Him selling his maximum allowed grant and also options when he knew before everyone is plenty.

Re: How Tier 2 cloud vendors banded together to cope with Spectre and Meltdown

#42

Post by lawrenceyan »

ed312 wrote: post #7
username223 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CEO should probably spend some time in the pokey for all the stock he sold between when he knew about this problem, and when it was publicly known. I'm curious how many other Intel employees sold stock in the same period.

This has been debunked already - CEO sold the maximum amount of company stock he could from his yearly award every 4th quarter for the last 4 (5?) years in a row.

Incorrect actually. Though it is true that Krzanich has consistently sold stock every 4th quarter, for this recent transaction, he massively increased the amount he sold. Krzanich sold so much in fact that if he had sold any more stock, he according to Intel corporate mandate bylaws would no longer be allowed to continue as CEO.

If you don't believe me, look for yourself: https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/12/19/intels-ceo-just-so...

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/50863/00011276021703...

And 'coincidentally', this massive increase in selling just seemed to somehow perfectly fit right in the middle of Intel being privately informed of Meltdown in June but before any public disclosure kept locked away all the way until now in January.

This is blatantly illegal insider trading. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Re: How Tier 2 cloud vendors banded together to cope with Spectre and Meltdown

#43

Post by sudhirj »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #41
Aloha wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intel CEO took over in 2012 - some of these vulnerabilities go back as far as the Pentium Pro (Meltdown) and the other one, effects (I believe) as far back as the original Pentium (Spectre) - why would you fire someone for something that happened under a predecessors leadership (Andy Grove, in this case was CEO when the Meltdown attack was added) - it makes no sense - I see nothing here that doesnt jive up with s…

Him selling his maximum allowed grant and also options when he knew before everyone is plenty.

That would be clear insider trading, with SEC prosecution and jail time. Unlikely if the executive has half a brain.

Re: How Tier 2 cloud vendors banded together to cope with Spectre and Meltdown

#44

Post by discoursism »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #38
discoursism wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear to me what the best approach is here. The wider the circle of those who know, the more likely it is that there will eventually be a leak. Three can keep a secret if two are dead and all that.

This proverb is mostly not true. I've worked in high-secrecy areas and everybody keeps their mouth shut because they're terrified of the consequences to their career. Three can keep a secret if two are bound by an NDA is closer.

I think in a tightly bound organization where all incentives are well aligned, that can be true.

Re: How Tier 2 cloud vendors banded together to cope with Spectre and Meltdown

#45

Post by gaadd33 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #4
brianwawok wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Intel made billions last year. They will make billions this year. They will make billions next year.

> Why? Because the fallout will cost billions over the next years. Intel as a company due to class-action lawsuits, recalls, rebates, and the shareholders because the drop in stock value after the announcement will cost them quite a chunk of money. In addition, more long-term, I sincerely hope that the cloud vendors (and maybe even Apple!) recognize that their total dependence on Intel (and NVIDIA in deep learning...…

You do know that INTC is up compared to 1 month ago? If it didn't drop that much on the initial announcement, why would it plummet in the coming months?

Re: How Tier 2 cloud vendors banded together to cope with Spectre and Meltdown

#46

Post by bostik »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #41
Aloha wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intel CEO took over in 2012 - some of these vulnerabilities go back as far as the Pentium Pro (Meltdown) and the other one, effects (I believe) as far back as the original Pentium (Spectre) - why would you fire someone for something that happened under a predecessors leadership (Andy Grove, in this case was CEO when the Meltdown attack was added) - it makes no sense - I see nothing here that doesnt jive up with s…

Him selling his maximum allowed grant and also options when he knew before everyone is plenty.

According to Matt Levine, Krzanich has a consistent history of selling the maximum or near-maximum amount of his stock grants every year.[0]

If one wants to be truly cynical, you could say he has been expecting something like this all the time and cashing out to ensure his money isn't tied to Intel. I am inclined to being slightly less cynical - I'd say he has been just cashing out regardless of the the company's performance.

0: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-05/citi-forg...

Re: How Tier 2 cloud vendors banded together to cope with Spectre and Meltdown

#47

Post by raverbashing »

rodonn wrote: post #11
mschuster91 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why? Because the fallout will cost billions over the next years. Intel as a company due to class-action lawsuits, recalls, rebates, and the shareholders because the drop in stock value after the announcement will cost them quite a chunk of money. In addition, more long-term, I sincerely hope that the cloud vendors (and maybe even Apple!) recognize that their total dependence on Intel (and NVIDIA in deep learning...…

Unclear that diversifying helps solve this sort of problem. More vendors could lead to the same number of bugs, but less investment in quality control per product e.g. if you make $1b and spend 1% on quality control, then you spend $10m checking your product for bugs. If the market fragments into 10 $100m vendors, then to get the same amount of money spent checking each chip for bugs, you'd have to spend 10x as much…

Different vendors have different bugs.

The aerospace industry has realized this a long time, and for some things they will have 3 different devices from 3 different vendors doing the same job

Re: How Tier 2 cloud vendors banded together to cope with Spectre and Meltdown

#48

Post by jordanthoms »

All this seems like a pretty compelling reason to move to using VMs and type safety to provide process isolation instead of using the hardware, e.g. https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death... or Microsoft's Singularity and Midori projects.

It's a shame there's so much inertia behind the current setup of hardware memory management etc that it seems it'll be a long time before anything actually happens here.

Re: How Tier 2 cloud vendors banded together to cope with Spectre and Meltdown

#49

Post by bartread »

sudhirj wrote: post #43
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Him selling his maximum allowed grant and also options when he knew before everyone is plenty.

That would be clear insider trading, with SEC prosecution and jail time. Unlikely if the executive has half a brain.

Yeah, exactly: it's too easy for people to draw a direct line between the selling and the announcement (which, of course, people have done) for him to have been stupid enough to do it with that intent. He seems to have simply been following the pattern of previous trades.

That being said, even though I don't think it's the case here, greed has been known to make people do some very stupid things.

Re: How Tier 2 cloud vendors banded together to cope with Spectre and Meltdown

#50

Post by peterwwillis »

Note that Google released information a week early, giving attackers a leg up in attacking these cloud providers, as opposed to Google giving the cloud providers the information immediately, which would have helped them defend themselves. But, surprise: Google is their competitor.

Google is basically the new Microsoft, except Microsoft could actually design working products when it was evil.

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