Hector Martin

And yes, Spectre v1 and PortSmash aren't going away. Anyone who knows anything about CPUs knew PortSmash was theoretically possible for years (just someone bothered to finally implement it). Disable HT or petition OSes to do security-domain-aware HT by default.

Also PortSmash should be adaptable to AMD systems with HT (i.e. Zen) and also all the POWER stuff. And it gets worse, because under more specific circumstances and with cleverer exploits, the side channels go beyond HT and to shared caches too.

Ultimately, computing needs to come to terms with the fact that any time there is *any* shared resource, that's ripe for side channels. This includes main memory and peripheral devices. It's worse and more insidious the lower level and more tightly coupled you make it, like HT.

I have no idea what this "walled garden" you speak of is. You can experiment all you want at home. If you're #46 on the Fortune 500 list you do not get to "experiment, make mistakes, and make #insecure things" that you then sell to customers.

Just because companies get to do awful things doesn't mean they should. If you don't care about security, that's great. Feel free to post your password on Twitter. Most of the rest of the world cares.