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Apple chips can be hacked to leak secrets from Gmail, iCloud, and more (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 days ago by return2ozma to c/technology

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[–] [email protected] 67 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Speculative execution seems to be the source of a lot of security flaws in many different CPUs. CPU manufacturers seem to be so focused on winning the performance race that security aware architecture design takes the backseat.

Also, it's more and more clear that it's a bad idea that websites can just execute arbitrary code. The JS APIs are way too powerful and complex nowadays. Maybe websites and apps should've stayed separate concepts instead of merging into "web apps".

I also wonder if it'd be possible to design a CPU so vulnerabilities like these are fixable instead of just "mitigable". Similar to how you can reprogram an FPGA. I have no clue how chip design works though, but please feel free to reply if you know more about this.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 16 hours ago

Fast for the benchmarks. "We'll make it slower and safer later."

[–] cellardoor 2 points 17 hours ago

Take a look at ARM Morello and CHERI.

[–] grue 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Also, it’s more and more clear that it’s a bad idea that websites can just execute arbitrary code. The JS APIs are way too powerful and complex nowadays.

Javascript in general was a mistake, and always has been.

The web should've had Scheme or Python instead. Or better yet, we shouldn't have given up so quickly on Java Web Start because then we could've had proper web applications with their own windows and native UIs and such.

Maybe websites and apps should’ve stayed separate concepts instead of merging into “web apps”.

Damn straight!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 20 hours ago

Oh no, not python!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Being a Linux user I really like everything being ran in the browser. What if we just have more control of which JS APIs can be used? On a site by site bases. Which I assume can probably already be done with extensions.

[–] JaddedFauceet 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Some browsers such as cromite disable JIT compilation and WebAssembly by default. Allowing you to opt-in to enable these features on a site by site bases.

JIT and WebAssembly have been the source of many high profile CVE in browser recently including the one mentioned in the post (well, this one is on Safari's Chrome).

relevant research