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Meltdown-Spectre amplifies call for new hardw.are-softw.are contract.
The Meltdown and Spectre hardware vulnerabilities have highlighted more than just the absolute sh*t show of an embargo process that has led, among other things, to questions from the US Congress. There's a deeper problem, one that goes back more than two decades.

Both Meltdown and Spectre are "timing-channel attacks". They subvert a computer's security mechanisms by analysing the time taken to perform various operations.

Intel's statement of January 3 described these hardware flaws as "methods that, when used for malicious purposes, have the potential to improperly gather sensitive data from computing devices that are operating as designed".

Gernot Heiser describes them another way.