Huang: Spectre/Meltdown Pits Transparency Against Liability

Here's a blog post from "bunnie" Huang on the tension between transparency and product liability around hardware flaws. "The open source community could use the Spectre/Meltdown crisis as an opportunity to reform the status quo. Instead of suing Intel for money, what if we sue Intel for documentation? If documentation and transparency have real value, then this is a chance to finally put that value in economic terms that Intel shareholders can understand. I propose a bargain somewhere along these lines: if Intel releases comprehensive microarchitectural hardware design specifications, microcode, firmware, and all software source code (e.g. for AMT/ME) so that the community can band together to hammer out any other security bugs hiding in their hardware, then Intel is absolved of any payouts related to the Spectre/Meltdown exploits."

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