Security News > 2020 > October > Complexity has broken computer security, says academic who helped spot Meltdown and Spectre flaws

Complexity has broken computer security, says academic who helped spot Meltdown and Spectre flaws
2020-10-02 15:15

Gruss and his colleagues discovered some of the biggest recent security snafus, including the Meltdown and Spectre microprocessor design flaws, a working Rowhammer exploit, attacks on Intel SGX including Plundervolt, and many more besides.

The assistant professor also advanced his theory that as Moore's Law runs out, we'll use more and more systems with more and more processor and accelerator cores all interacting with each other, which means even more security risk.

All of which lands us in a world where individual systems are flawed, interactions among them can't be secured, we build and link more computers every day even though we know that just increases risk, and we can't or won't change.

"Our systems are getting more and more complex so we have to invest more and more time into studying them like nature," he said.

"In 30 years I would expect we have more people studying and analysing systems, and more variety of security jobs," he told the virtual event.


News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/10/02/daniel_gruss_complexity_broke_security/