The previous post contained a bunch of issues that require clarification:
First and foremost, a glaring error: the linked CCC talk had absolutely nothing to do with the group that originated the KAISER patches. Please accept my sincerest apologies for that, I have absolutely no idea how the topics became intermingled – possibly due to spending only a few hours reading, and around an hour at 4AM writing.
I cannot emphasize enough the article is (and can only be) supposition in a domain I lack expertise in, as repeatedly highlighted throughout. Written in the style of a paranoid and conspiratorial murder mystery, it was as fun to write as I hope it was to read, and besides, who doesn’t enjoy a planetary scale whodunnit to pick over during the holidays? (Well, apparently a lot of super serious infosec types)
As with most stuff I post, the aim is not to be right on the Internet (after all, I lack a career in infosec!), but to generate the kind of frothy noise that leads to learning more about whatever it is I’m playing with, often precisely by being horribly wrong. In this case, anonymous feedback alongside some Hacker News commentary cleared up much of my conflation, indicated the issue may not affect AMD CPUs, and the embargo may end on January 4, now-common knowledge tidbits I consider resoundingly positive successes of writing the article at all.
The article was largely sourced from the marvellous work of the wonderful editor over at LWN, and intentionally did not make use of LWN’s member link function to bypass the paywall. As is evident in various places on the Internet, the original LWN article has been shared repeatedly, but that decades old, consistently trustworthy yet dry format was insufficiently clickbaity for communicating what I believe promises to be one of the most interesting events in 2018 relevant to my profession.
I hope you would agree that however inaccurate, it contained sufficient additional value as to not be considered a clone, and meanwhile has thus far delivered 1,100 clicks to a page requesting the viewer subscribe to LWN to continue reading, creating awareness for what I worry is a high quality yet continuously surviving niche news outlet. This I also consider a positive result.
An original source branded this blog a “regurgibloid” for daring to link some already-public tweets, that, to my knowledge have never previously appeared on the same page anywhere on the Internet, suggesting instead the common uninformed tech shall have but two options for acquiring what was allegedly already public knowledge: consume thousands of tweets comprised primarily of egotistical teen angst stretching back aeons, often filled with even less accurate supposition than this article, or remain coldly in the dark until such times as CPUBLEED.COM (or whatever this bug is branded) powered by WordPress and hastily drawn cartoons gets peppered all over the BBC news.
It’s sufficient to say this attitude is beyond repugnant, frankly embarrassing, and there could be nothing closer to why I’m thankful almost daily that I never pursued a career in infosec. Please remind yourself at least once a year, us clueless lowly plebeian developers are the very reason you earn an income at all! Without us there’d be nothing to break, no precious knowledge to hoard, and nothing over which to self-aggrandize.
And finally, since signing up for Tumblr, its UI editor, once a bastion of modern web app design, has regressed to the point of almost total unusability. Correcting the numerous typos in the post required reformatting from start to end each time I clicked save. I have left the typos verbatim, partly as a sign of the haste in which it was written, but mainly as a kind of negative reinforcement loop to eventually push me off Tumblr. Lord knows it would avert some of the cheapest feedback the article received.
I wish there were some moral to finish with, but really the holidays are over, the mystery continues, and all that remains is a bad taste from all the flack I have received for daring intrude upon the sacred WordPress-powered tapestry of a global security embargo. Trust me, it will never happen again – life is simply too short.
Wishing you a happy new year!
