03-14-2018, 07:51 AM
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/26...ks-hit-job
Quote:If these security flaws are real, AMD has a lot of work to do to fix them. It absolutely deserves criticism for failing to catch them in the first place, and there is at least one security researcher who has seen the code and believes the matter to be serious. But even if CTS-Labs findings are genuine, it has communicated them in a manner completely at odds with best practices in the security community. Its manner and method of communicating its findings have much more in common with a PR firm hired to do a hit job on a competitor or a company looking to make a financial killing by shorting stock than a reputable security firm interested in establishing a name for itself. Finding 13 major security flaws in a major microprocessor was guaranteed to make the news all on its own.
It’s entirely possible that CTS-Labs is a relatively new company comprised of researchers who decided to debut with a splash and sacrificed the best practices of security disclosures to do it. It’s also possible it isn’t. The company has done itself no favors with these shenanigans.
Update:
CTS-Labs has acknowledged to Reuters that it shares its research with companies that pay for the data and that it’s a firm with just six employees. Meanwhile, Viceroy Research, a short-seller firm, has published a 25-page “obituary” for AMD based on this data in which it declares AMD is worth $0.00 and believes no one should purchase AMD products on any basis, for any reason whatsoever. It also predicts AMD will be forced to file for bankruptcy on the basis of this “report.”
We stand by what we said regarding the flaws themselves — we’ll wait to hear from AMD on how that shakes out and what the risks are — but the actual reporting of the flaws appears to have been done in profound bad faith and with an eye towards enriching a very particular set of clients. ExtremeTech denounces, in the strongest possible terms, this scheme’s apparent perversion of the security flaw disclosure process.