Group items tagged

"Serious security flaws that could let attackers steal sensitive data, including passwords and banking information, have been found in processors designed by Intel, AMD and ARM. The flaws, named Meltdown and Spectre, were discovered by security researchers at Google's Project Zero in conjunction with academic and industry researchers from several countries. Combined they affect virtually every modern computer, including smartphones, tablets and PCs from all vendors and running almost any operating system."

"These exploits are based on chip engineering flaws, not on software flaws. Apple, Google, Abode, Microsoft, and other software companies didn't write poor software or bad Operating Systems to cause these problems to occur. Rather, the chip manufacturers - Intel, AMD and ARM - designed and then engineered computer chips with flaws built into them. Once discovered, those flaws allow the Meltdown and Spectre exploits to be run. Worse, these chips have been sold with consumer computers, servers and mobile devices since 1995. so the impact is, potentially, both personal and global in scope."

"Jaron Lanier, the author and inventor of the concept of virtual reality, warned that digital infrastructure was moving beyond human control. He said: "When you try to achieve great scale with automation and the automation exceeds the boundaries of human oversight, there is going to be failure. That goes for governments, for consumer companies, for Google, or a big insurance company. It is infuriating because it is driven by unreasonable greed. In many cases, the systems that tend to fail, fail because of an attempt to make them run automatically with a minimal amount of human oversight.""