Spectre
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Rolls-Royce's first EV is the $413,500 Spectre coupe
Rolls-Royce has unveiled its first EV, the Spectre coupe, and it's every bit as quiet and smooth as you'd expect — if you're willing to pay $413,500 for it.
HP’s premium laptop revamp: more OLED displays, 12th-gen Intel CPUs
This spring, HP is basically updating its entirely premium laptop portfolio with a range of new Spectre and Envy notebooks in a wide range of sizes and designs.
Rolls-Royce plans to stop making gas-powered cars by 2030
The brand's first EV, named Spectre, should hit the roads in late 2023.
Researchers detail three new Intel and AMD Spectre vulnerabilities
Security researchers have discovered three new variants of Spectre vulnerabilities that affect Intel and AMD processors with micro-op caches.
Chrome for Android update protects against Spectre-like chip hacks
Last year, Chrome 67 for desktop introduced Site Isolation to protect users from Spectre-style security threats by making it harder for attackers to steal data from other websites. Now, Chrome 77 is bringing Site Isolation to Chrome on Android.
HP’s Spectre x360 packs a 4K display if you want it
HP is once again tweaking its popular Spectre x360 convertible lineup with a new 13-inch model. While the new x360 maintains the overall look of its predecessor, it's 13 percent smaller. It also has less noticeable display bezels, with the top half of the computer featuring a 90 percent screen-to-body ratio where the 2018 model was only 78 percent display. At 2.8 pounds, the new Spectre is also lighter than both the 2018 MacBook Air and 2019 MacBook Pro.
Install updates now to address a vulnerability in most Intel CPUs
In January 2018, a pair of security exploits dubbed Spectre and Meltdown showed how attackers could take advantage of commonly-implemented CPU technology to access data they shouldn't have been able to. They were followed by a similar bug, Foreshadow, late last year, and now researchers have uncovered four different techniques that exploit Intel's speculative execution technology in a similar way. The website CPU.fail has collected information about each vulnerability -- they're collectively referred to as Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS) -- including Zombieload, RIDL & Fallout, and Store-to-Leak Forwarding. Example code shows how the attacks could be launched using malicious JavaScript, for example, and researchers state that it would be difficult for antivirus software to detect it, however they have not found evidence of anyone using the tech in attacks so far.
HP's Spectre x360 breaks new ground with a 15-inch AMOLED display
HP has announced that its latest Spectre x360 will be the first 15-inch laptop with an AMOLED display. It's actually been hard to find OLED of any kind on a PC, other than on a handful of models like HP's 13-inch Spectre x360 and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga. AMOLED has been even rarer, appearing only on a couple of laptops including the Alienware OLED 13 and Samsung's own 12-inch Galaxy TabPro S. This lack of organic displays has been a shame, because the few models we've tested have impressed us a lot, offering much improved image quality.
HP Spectre Folio review: This leather PC means business
Who needs a leather computer? When HP announced the Spectre Folio, the first notebook with a completely leather case, it seemed like a vain attempt at doing something different. But after spending a week with it, the Folio turned out to be much more than a gimmick. With its leather covering and a unique convertible hinge, the Spectre Folio is a step towards a wild new world of computer designs, one where everyone stops trying to recreate the premium unibody style that Apple pioneered.
HP's latest Spectre x360 laptops boast up to a 22-hour battery
HP is once again tweaking its Spectre x360 convertible laptops, but this time the changes promise to be more tangible. The new Spectre x360 13 and 15 boast common functional upgrades, such as a dual-chamfered design (it's now easier to lift the lid) and a privacy kill switch that electrically disables the webcam. However, the star of the show is undoubtedly the 13-inch model. It now boasts a whopping 22.5-hour peak battery life -- while it's likely to fall short of that figure in the real world, the 37 percent improvement over the previous generation is still huge. There's optional "gigabit-class" LTE on the 13-inch system, too.
Future Windows 10 update will soften the blow of Spectre patches
Like with other companies, Microsoft's Spectre and Meltdown security fixes introduced a performance hit -- it mostly affected servers, but it was there. Thankfully, that blow shouldn't be quite so severe in the next several months. The company's Mehmet Iyigun has confirmed that a major Windows 10 update in the first half of 2019 will use Google's Retpoline solution to mitigate Spectre version 2 attacks without the usual slowdown. The improvement should be such that the impact will be "noise-level" in most situations. You may not even notice, then.
MIT finds a smarter way to fight Spectre-style CPU attacks
Many companies have developed patches to mitigate Meltdown- and Spectre-like speculative memory attacks. However, they can come with compromises: they can leave major gaps and still slow down your system. MIT researchers may have a better way. They've developed a new method, Dynamically Allocated Way Guard (yes, DAWG is on purpose), that promises tight security without dragging performance through the dirt.
Intel discloses another set of processor vulnerabilities
Intel disclosed another set of processor flaws today that could let attackers steal information stored on computers or third party clouds. Discovered by a number of researchers and reported to Intel in January, the vulnerability includes three varieties. The company said in a blog post that when combined with updates released earlier this year, new updates being released today should protect most users from the vulnerability. "We are not aware of reports that any of these methods have been used in real-world exploits, but this further underscores the need for everyone to adhere to security best practices," said Intel.
Google Chrome prevents sites from launching Spectre-like attacks
If you're using Chrome, you now have fewer reasons to worry about Spectre-style security threats. Google has revealed that Chrome 67 for desktop and the matching Chrome OS release enable a previously experimental Site Isolation feature that reduces the chances of intruders using speculative execution side-channel attacks like Spectre. The technique limits the web renderer process to content from a single site, preventing an attacker's page from sharing malicious code through an innocent page (say, though cross-site pop-ups or remotely stored scripts). In theory, sinister types can't swipe passwords or other sensitive data while you're visiting otherwise innocuous sites.
Intel details fourth Spectre-style CPU security flaw
Intel said it was expanding its bug bounty program to help find more Spectre-like processor security flaws, and unfortunately it just found one. The company (along with Google and Microsoft) has disclosed a fourth exploit (simply titled Variant 4) that once again uses speculative execution to expose some data through a side channel. The attack is so far known to work in a "language-based runtime environment" like the sort you'd see in a web browser (say, JavaScript), although Intel hadn't seen evidence of successful browser-based exploits.
AMD releases chip patches to address Spectre variant two
AMD has released a microcode update to address variant two of the Spectre chip flaw, which makes computers vulnerable to attacks that could reveal sensitive information such as passwords. It's been released alongside Microsoft's monthly "Patch Tuesday" update, which contains Spectre variant two mitigations for Windows 10.
I can’t wait for laptops with Apple’s own chips
Apple might be ready to ditch Intel's x86 chips in the Mac in favor of a custom-designed piece of silicon. At least that's the story out of Bloomberg, which believes that a transition by Apple to its own CPUs could begin by 2020. It's just a single, as yet unsubstantiated story, but it's already made a dent in Intel's share price, even if Apple is hardly its biggest customer. And yet it's clear that between Intel's recent problems and Apple's successes, it's time that divorce proceedings begin.
Intel redesigned its 8th-gen processors to patch ‘Meltdown’ flaws
As promised, Intel has redesigned its upcoming 8th-gen Xeon and Core processors to further reduce the risks of attacks via the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities, CEO Brian Krzanich wrote. Those fixes are on top of the software updates already issued, which now patch "100 percent" of vulnerable Intel products launched in the past five years, he affirmed. The hardware changes will stop attacks by the Spectre variant 2 and Meltdown variant 3 weaknesses, but software fixes will still be required to patch Spectre variant 1 vulnerabilities.
Microsoft fixes more Meltdown and Spectre flaws in Windows
Microsoft has taken another step on its gargantuan journey to fortifying more than a billion PCs worldwide against Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities. This week's Patch Tuesday release updates PCs running x86 versions of Windows 7 and 8.1 against Meltdown, meaning that all currently supported Windows releases now include defense against this vulnerability.
Intel currently facing 32 class-action lawsuits for Spectre and Meltdown
Yesterday, Intel expanded its bug bounty program to catch more issues like the extensive Meltdown and Spectre CPU flaws, but that was too little, too late for some chip owners. We knew three class-action lawsuits were filed in early January days after the vulnerabilities were publicized, but according to an SEC filing, the total has grown to 30 multi-party suits by customers and two securities suits. Most argue that Intel violated securities laws when it assured its products were safe to use, which the Meltdown and Spectre flaws revealed to be untrue.
