AMD also gets sued for Spectre



Not just Intel, chip manufacturer AMD now also has been sued for the Spectre security leak. It is a so-called 'class action' lawsuit filed on behalf of the company's investors.
In the indictment, both AMD, the financial director and director of the company, are accused of having artificially increased the share price of the company by not previously announcing that AMD processors are vulnerable to the Specter leak. AMD was informed at the beginning of June last year, sources claim.
Spectre came to light earlier this month with the Meltdown vulnerability and, in contrast to this vulnerability, affects virtually all modern computers, smartphones, and tablets. Investors of the company have, according to the charges, "made significant losses" as a result of the price drop after the publication of the leak.
A spokesperson for AMD told The Register that the company found the accusations unfounded, reports nu.nl. Four lawsuits have already been filed against competitor Intel because of Spectre and Meltdown.
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https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/17/amd-investors-sue-over-chip-flaw-silence/
Only article I found, but it does not contain the above quote.
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This.
And some of this, from both sides. Since Ryzen release AMD worship has been out in full market force. Sometimes Intel has their people out. I have no idea why users want to treat tech companies like sports team hysteria.
AMD did try and deny they were affected by variant 1 and 2 (Spectre). In a year we will likely find out they are vulnerable to variant 3 (Meltdown). For days AMD and the fans said only variant one because AMD used the term "near zero" to describe vulnerability to variant 2. "Near zero" is not "zero". All of this are near zero risk scenarios; that was just misleading semantics. What I don't get is this: why are tech companies always so vulnerable to lawsuits for exploitable flaws? The end user must also take steps to invite that exploit - this stuff doesn't happen logging online to check your bank statement or write a word doc.
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I have no idea how you came to the conclusion that anyone's worshipping AMD in this thread. Maybe calm down, you're creating conflict where there's no ground for it.
As for the news, this smells like a cheap jab on what AMD said with the purpose of making some money.
By reading this thread and the equivalent Intel thread from a week ago?
I don't really see how someone can read those and NOT come to that conclusion. The third comment in this thread is a comment implying that this is an illegitimate suite made by a greedy individual out to get money. The first comment in the Intel thread is essentially "good for them! Teach that evil Intel a lesson! We should all boycott their products until they stop being evil!". Maybe you could say that's just one individual's opinion but it's not. If you look at the comments in both thread there is an consensus in both threads about the intentions of both parties. And this is based solely on an assumption determined by the name of the company in question (as that's the only difference between the two stories). I mean come on man, you can't honestly read those comments and say with a straight face that you don't see what he's talking about. And it's not like this is anything new either. Go back and look at the comment sections on every Intel/AMD related article these past few years (especially since Ryzen came out), the pattern is clear as day in all of them. If the company being accused is Intel they are assumed guilty, if it's AMD they are assumed innocent. Even when evidence exists that contradicts this but especially when there isn't any evidence one way or the other. It's clearly some kind of brand loyalty thing and as someone who builds systems with both brands and doesn't have any particular loyalty to any particular company it just bugs the hell out of me to see it so pervasive here and in many other PC hardware communities. Is he making a big deal about this and probably going to end up starting a flame war in this thread? Yeah, probably. But it needs to stop and pointing it out is the only way I see that ever happening so I'm all for it.
Edit: Ok I take back that part I said about the consensus in this thread. Some people are starting to read the article and point out that AMD was definitely in the wrong this time. I'm happy to see that. Perhaps things are finally going to change and people are going to start taking to time to read and articles and wait for evidence before jumping to conclusions. At least I hope so. The conspiracy theorist stuff in the Intel thread is still pretty bad though and I'm amazed more people didn't come forward to point that out.
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Scumbag lawyers.
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Why fight windmills? Opinions are opinions after all, we don't have to agree with everybody.
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I think the point is that some people will always think the worst of Intel and conversely never speak ill of AMD no matter what they get up to.
AMD is no more your 'friend' than Intel is, if AMD was in Intel's position, they would have exploited the market in exactly the same way or they would have been quickly usurped by a company that would.
If you are talking about the Salvation Army, you can assign it all the altruistic value in the world, but when it comes to corporations, the bottom line is black, and more specifically staying well within it at all times.
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Intel is a disgusting company. Of course I'll keep badmouthing them. Intel's CEO selling all of his Intel stock he could before these bugs were made public is all you need to know to understand what kind of a corporation it is and what are their values. Without AMD, you'd still be dancing around your 4-core max mainstream CPU in 2025, with hardly any generational performance increase to speak of. No use trying to deny that because history has already proven it.
AMD isn't a disgusting company, but its unfortunate decisions in the GPU arena have made me badmouth it as well a few times. Nothing I can do about it.
Btw, these recent bugs, neither Meltdown nor Spectre, while annoying, are affecting my image of either company. It's not like they would have designed the CPUs on purpose so that the bug(s) were there. They are just accidents. While it would be amusing to see Intel suffer in the court because of this, it would do nothing good to the technology industry at large. Intel's CEO, however, should be sued as an individual.
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not sure how they are gonna prove amd did anything wrong, spectre isn't even based on a hw bug, its the consquence of how the effected processors function normally. and amd chose its words very carefully, when speaking about it .
hard to say how this will go.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/17/amd-investors-sue-over-chip-flaw-silence/
Only article I found, but it does not contain the above quote.
My quote is linked to the comments section of the article itself, which I clearly said my response was from.
As for accusations of AMD fanboyisim: I haven't thrown in my two cents into the matter of the Intel case because my feelings are similar to now: These cases should be thrown out on the basis of the shareholders wanting to profit without regards to all else. Spectre affects most modern CPUs, there is no need to single Intel and AMD out for this problem as they only disclosed the exploit after the fixes were ready, which is best practice in all respects.
The only exception being the Meltdown fixes has some non-trivial performance impact, and Intel has quite likely known about Meltdown for years, and their handling of the matter is less than commendable, with publishing press releases with a lot of implicative wording to the effect of the "main" bug (Meltdown) on their hardware affecting their competition, even if it factually does not state this.
At any rate, any claims that Spectre fixes have a significant impact on performance is amusing and disingenuous, at best. However, the lawsuit claims that they should EVER disclose exploit information about security bugs before fixes are ready should be thrown out (for BOTH Intel and AMD) post-haste, due to the dangerous precedent it will set in the industry; releasing information about exploits before they can be patched unleashes an "arms-race" on how quickly this can be exploited in the wild before people are protected.
I hate having to defend my stand on these things but more than anything I hate being accused of being a non-neutral observer to these events. I'd rather not have to respond to this again, please.
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My quote is linked to the comments section of the article itself, which I clearly said my response was from.
As for accusations of AMD fanboyisim: I haven't thrown in my two cents into the matter of the Intel case because my feelings are similar to now: These cases should be thrown out on the basis of the shareholders wanting to profit without regards to all else. Spectre affects most modern CPUs, there is no need to single Intel and AMD out for this problem as they only disclosed the exploit after the fixes were ready, which is best practice in all respects.
The only exception being the Meltdown fixes has some non-trivial performance impact, and Intel has quite likely known about Meltdown for years, and their handling of the matter is less than commendable, with publishing press releases with a lot of implicative wording to the effect of the "main" bug (Meltdown) on their hardware affecting their competition, even if it factually does not state this.
At any rate, any claims that Spectre fixes have a significant impact on performance is amusing and disingenuous, at best. However, the lawsuit claims that they should EVER disclose exploit information about security bugs before fixes are ready should be thrown out (for BOTH Intel and AMD) post-haste, due to the dangerous precedent it will set in the industry; releasing information about exploits before they can be patched unleashes an "arms-race" on how quickly this can be exploited in the wild before people are protected.
I hate having to defend my stand on these things but more than anything I hate being accused of being a non-neutral observer to these events. I'd rather not have to respond to this again, please.
So... where did anybody require you to "defend your stand on these things"? The only thing that was asked is (more or less) if the article's gone, I posted the link to the article. You started defending yourself

By the way, "the fixes were ready", this is greatly exaggerated. Maybe Intel had their microcode fixes ready, but the situation is less than what I personally would call "best practice in all respects".
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The root of the problem is: knowing your hardware has a security flaw and you chose to release to consumers anyway.
Both AMD and Intel did release hardware after knowing about the security issues but the key difference for me is that AMD didn't lie about performance wile Intel did.
I don't see lawsuits resolve anything, they just want free money. Instead they should force each company to update their microcode up to 10 years back.
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Not surprised. Next thing you know, there will be a lawsuit against ARM as well. Greedy and/or opportunistic investors wanting their handouts (ah, handout culture, LOL).
Of course as an AMD shareholder I might be able to get some money, but I don't like taking part in frivolous lawsuits. No handouts for me.
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Pretty stupid. I don't think either Intel or AMD should've been sued for this. It was an accident, and so far, there is no evidence that anybody exploited these security flaws. Just ridiculous how people will sue over something that's hardly an actual problem.
I also don't understand why AMD hasn't been used sooner, and, why IBM, ARM, and ARM's partners haven't been sued.
Eh.... I wouldn't go that far. AMD obviously is out there to make money and they've pulled a lot of crap that threatened their customer loyalty, but the only reason they're still in business is because they aren't so obviously greedy as Intel (where a lot of people supported them mainly on principle) and they've rarely been anywhere near as shady in their business practices as Intel has. Intel for a while was synonymous with being anticompetitive; even in AMD's best of days, they've never had the leverage to be like that.
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Who cares about stuff like that??? In the US where anyone can sue everyone for everything, it´s just business. Here is the same, people are suing not because is the right thing to do but because they think they can make some easy money...
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You're right, but it still annoys me. And like I said, why are IBM and ARM (or rather, SoftBank) off the hook? Greed doesn't stop at the major players. I'm sure Oracle could be sued too.
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well the linked article on theregister is gone , guess i wont be reading that lol,
not sure how they are gonna prove amd did anything wrong, spectre isn't even based on a hw bug, its the consquence of how the effected processors function normally. and amd chose its words very carefully, when speaking about it .
hard to say how this will go.