News Lawsuit Claims Intel Sold Billions of CPUs Knowing of Downfall Vulnerability

[Admin]

A new class action suit alleges Intel sold billions of CPUs which it knew would be susceptible to an AVX side-channel attack, and complains the patch saps performance too much.

Lawsuit Claims Intel Sold Billions of CPUs Knowing of Downfall Vulnerability : Read more

 

[rluker5]

If these lawsuit filers really want to make money, AMD is currently selling CPUs with a known, published vulnerability that affects performance in far more workloads than Downfall ever could- SQUIP. It has a side channel vulnerability when SMT is used by those that don't control which threads their programs use.

Probably every CPU they are selling that has SMT enabled.

The individual risk of being exploited with SQUIP is low, but it also is with Downfall. And I bet most that have Skylake and Rocket Lake chips never even noticed when the mitigation was enacted, but most would notice if their SMT were turned off by an update.

 

[vanadiel007]

"Basically, each talks about their research into buying or DIYing a fast modern PC, how the system performance was eventually impacted by Downfall mitigations, and how price / performance was thus heavily impacted."

I think system performance over time is impossible to measure, and Windows likely impacts it more than the mitigation. That and who cares about the performance of a 5 year old CPU. If this was in a server environment I could see why it would matter, but for a home user building their own machine: time to upgrade buddy.

Probably be way cheaper to upgrade than the class action lawsuit...

 

[hotaru.hino]

What do the plaintiffs expect companies to do when they're made aware of a security vulnerability? Drop everything and fix it? And the claim that the patches "slowed down beyond recognition" is an argument that shouldn't pass muster unless they have the empirical evidence that they and the rest of their "class" are severely hampered.

On the extreme end of things, maybe they should go after everyone who employs cryptography because it's all vulnerable to brute force attacks.

 

[TechieTwo]

Intel does whatever makes them the most money, period. They violate law and good judgment all the time in their lust for Mo Money as past lawsuits confirm. They have enough lawyers to pummel all including the DOJ. They may end up paying a trivial fine vs. the revenue generated but it won't change their operating mentality. Why would it when it's so profitable to violate law?

 

[magbarn]

Can't wait to collect my $5 Intel rebate to apply towards a future purchase while the pond scum lawyers reap $10's of millions in the settlement. Class action is trash,

 

[greenreaper]

Probably be way cheaper to upgrade than the class action lawsuit...

Plaintiffs in such lawsuits are generally compensated for their trouble, over and above the amount granted to the average member of the class (though nowhere near as much as the lawyers).

 

[vanadiel007]

Plaintiffs in such lawsuits are generally compensated for their trouble, over and above the amount granted to the average member of the class (though nowhere near as much as the lawyers).

That is assuming they can make their case.

 

[frogr]

"Basically, each talks about their research into buying or DIYing a fast modern PC, how the system performance was eventually impacted by Downfall mitigations, and how price / performance was thus heavily impacted."

I think system performance over time is impossible to measure, and Windows likely impacts it more than the mitigation. That and who cares about the performance of a 5 year old CPU. If this was in a server environment I could see why it would matter, but for a home user building their own machine: time to upgrade buddy.

Probably be way cheaper to upgrade than the class action lawsuit...

Class action lawsuits aren't usually about getting money for the plaintiffs. Often times the defendants end up settling for much less than the proported damages to the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs get a small token for their troubles and the class action lawyers get 1/3 of the total which is usually a very hefty sum.

Many frivolous class action suits are filed and often companies will settle to end the legal costs, bad press and the ensuing depressed stock prices. We take need to somehow cap attorneys awards to limit the frivolous cases