I don’t believe that explanation is more probable. If the NSA had the power to compell Apple to place a backdoor in their chip, it would probably be a proper backdoor. It wouldn’t be a side channel in the cache that is exploitable only in specific conditions.

The exploit page mentions that the Intel DMP is robust because it is more selective. So this is likely just a simple design error of making the system a little too trigger-happy.

Wow, what a dishearteningly predictable attack.

I have studied computer architecture and hardware security at the graduate level—though I am far from an expert. That said, any student in the classroom could have laid out the theoretical weaknesses in a “data memory-dependent prefetcher”.

My gut says (based on my own experience having a conversation like this) the engineers knew there was a “information leak” but management did not take it seriously. It’s hard to convince someone without a cryptographic background why you need to {redesign/add a workaround/use a lower performance design} because of “leaks”. If you can’t demonstrate an attack they will assume the issue isn’t exploitable.

Two Vonnegut novels—God Bless you Mr. Rosewater and Player Piano—fundamentally shifted the way I view the world.

The novels primarily discuss the economy, automation, and human wellfare. When I was young I defaulted to a laissez-faire economic mindset, and basically assumed automation and technology would always make our quality of lives improve. I was very much in the Ayn Rand club on economic and moral issues. These books were ultimately what made me reflect and consider the other “spiritual” (in the sense Vonnegut uses the term) aspects of human wellfare. Vonnegut was my introduction to humanist thought, and I owe the vast majority of my personal moral development to the influence of these two books.