now

The Dutch researchers had remained quiet for eight months about the problems they had discovered while Intel worked on the fix it released in May. Then when Intel realized the patch didn’t fix everything and asked them to remain quiet six more months, it also requested that the researchers alter a paper they had planned to present at a security conference to remove any mention of the unpatched vulnerabilities, they said. The researchers said they reluctantly agreed to comply because they didn’t want the flaws to become public knowledge without a fix.

“We had to redact the paper to cover for them so the world would not see how vulnerable things are,” said Kaveh Razavi, also a professor of computer science at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and part of the group that reported the vulnerabilities. — Kim Zetter, editor New York Times · Intel Fixes a Security Flaw It Said Was Repaired 6 Months Ago

Remember the best part, guys!That very flaw Intel fixes (hopefully complete)is that very security flaw Intel said they got fixed/repaired already 6 months ago. Except that theyback then – but lied (sic!) about in doing so instead, despite they knew better. So if anyone may wonder who may have been come up with it, it was some university some people may remember now …Yup, that is the very same Dutchthat Intel tried to bribe six month ago in offering money forsaid informations for some additional six months (huge thanks @MAXLD for your quite insightful managing of putting together unknown pieces!). These very six months are up as of yesterday. It's just that we now knowexactly they tried to hide. The today's 77 new flaws So these $40K and $80K they tried them to swallow back then (after being legitimately paid the $100K bounty) were supposed to pay for the very silence the researchers were about to engage for another six months;Makes one wonder when the next bunch is going to hit in we ain't aware of yet – but are kept secret for now.Like the tight-lipped Bitdefender warning they issued in August. Today's new security-flaws seem to be mostly coming from that Dutchin May.Yeah, like many say since a while and like we all should know by now, the very day Meltdown & Spectre went public, Intel reflexively engaged into another (st)age of their infamous mode ›Cover-up‹. It seems to be someactually.I mean, if you consider how long they have had been informed about the issues back in the middle of 2017 well in advance before anyone else and how little they did. They kept shut about everything – and most likely they would've liked to keepunder the rug. It's just that the Linux kernel-developer went public on January '18 as they got so darn fed up on how Intel handled all this that those leaked those anyway – after over half a year Intel did exactly, not even informing OEMs.Funny enough, the Linux kernel-developer even vastly helped Intel to such an extent getting rid of those flaws without ANYONE noticing, that only a handful of kernel-developers (and only the most trusted ones) brought in given kernel-patches silentlyANY info on what exactly they were doing on it just around Christmas in 2017 (so when everyone is with their family and no-one would hopefully get notice of it) – which is a stark and the utmost extreme novum never happening before in the rather transparent open-source community. That being said, it escalated as Intel demanded more and more from them effectively doing their work hiding dirty laundry until it blew out publicly as even those few involved got just sick to the back teeth on how Intel was handling it.It's actually ridiculous! Intel even failed to inform U.S. cyber security officials about the Meltdown's and Spectre's chip flaws ahead of when they leaked to the public even though Intel had advanced knowledge of the vulnerabilities! Let that just sink in for a minute or two… that not even U.S. authorities may have been aware of Meltdown and Spectre beforehand – but have been made so when those went public.I really don't know what's going on at this company the last couple of years, but I firmly believe that a company's management which is honestly thinking they actuallyget through with it when only trying to sweep all that under the table just hard enough and paying everyone involved to keeping their mouths shut about everything just long enough for being forgotten, can't be really driven by anything else than pure insanity. They surely have some mentality problem with their culture of concealment and their continuous obstructionism.Nothing less than mindblowing already …That's just since they constantly backing up themselves by buying their own stocks. For instance, last quarter they already bought up 107M shares being worth just about 5.6 billions (see page 6,11), according to their own numbers This recent quarter they just finished, they again bought back 209M shares and thus virtuallyover a worth of about +$10B (see page 10 on their official quarterly reports ) – which adds up to roughly $15B on buybacks just on the last two quarters – and yet they just decided to even top that (as the board gave their green light) by spending even $20B on buybacks atop when their board just authorised an increased buyback-program over $20B () for repurchasing shares with given worth within the next 15-18 months (see p. 4 on link above). That's just about $35B spend on buybacks in such a short time-frame, which is just straight out insane! They literally just, just let that sink in for a while.So they're actively using their own stock's sudden fall in prices after quarter-results going public to buy their own fallen stocks in large numbers. If that isn't already sketchy, I don't know what it is …Then again, if we've learned something from the past, that's it, that if a company buys up their own shares in such a large amount, it mostly was a sure sign that something wasn't right at all with the company – and that the management often enough helplessly tried to hold up the masquerade as long as it's possible prior to end all this with a big, fundamental final bang. Do we have to be kinda worried here?Good Lord, Intel. How you have fallen …Smartcom