Apple, ARM & Intel facing potential Israeli class action suit over Meltdown & Spectre
Israeli plaintiffs are seeking to file a class action lawsuit against Apple, ARM, and Intel over the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities recently uncovered in Intel and ARM-based processors.
The filing was made through the Haifa District Court, and includes both computer and cellphone owners in the affected class, Hamodia said on Sunday. The court is due to issue a ruling on the matter in the next several weeks.
"Our worst nightmares have come to pass, and a giant tech bubble has burst," wrote an attorney for the plaintiffs, Rimon Zinati. "That this is an earthquake is an understatement. Since the announcement by the companies of the vulnerabilities of their products, we realize that we are living in a fantasy world and now realize that we do not even have a minimum of privacy."
Should it be green-lit by a judicial review in a few weeks, the Israeli suit will add to a growing number of legal challenges related to Meltdown and Spectre. Intel in particular has known about the problems for months, but only confirmed them recently.
Apple and Intel have distributed some software fixes, but the vulnerabilities still haven't been completely resolved. In theory, a knowledgeable hacker could use Meltdown or Spectre to access restricted memory.
The filing was made through the Haifa District Court, and includes both computer and cellphone owners in the affected class, Hamodia said on Sunday. The court is due to issue a ruling on the matter in the next several weeks.
"Our worst nightmares have come to pass, and a giant tech bubble has burst," wrote an attorney for the plaintiffs, Rimon Zinati. "That this is an earthquake is an understatement. Since the announcement by the companies of the vulnerabilities of their products, we realize that we are living in a fantasy world and now realize that we do not even have a minimum of privacy."
Should it be green-lit by a judicial review in a few weeks, the Israeli suit will add to a growing number of legal challenges related to Meltdown and Spectre. Intel in particular has known about the problems for months, but only confirmed them recently.
Apple and Intel have distributed some software fixes, but the vulnerabilities still haven't been completely resolved. In theory, a knowledgeable hacker could use Meltdown or Spectre to access restricted memory.
Comments
Who gets the most publicity when a lawsuit is filed against them?
You can guess the answer.
"Our worst nightmares have come to pass, and a giant tech bubble has burst," wrote an attorney for the plaintiffs, Rimon Zinati. "That this is an earthquake is an understatement. Since the announcement by the companies of the vulnerabilities of their products, we realize that we are living in a fantasy world and now realize that we do not even have a minimum of privacy."
I wonder if this attorney also has a sideline job as a movie scriptwriter?
Class action lawsuits against Microsoft or Apple whenever a security exploit is discovered in their OS?
The only absolute with regards to computers (software & hardware) is there will always be bugs/exploits. You simply cannot design something that will be 100% free from any bugs. All you can do is put in an effort to minimize these from happening, and WHEN they happen provide a quick response to deal with the issue.
But in a small country like Israel, who knows how closely the companies are tied into the courts and how the courts will rule and what, if anything, Apple can do about it.
They use ARM's design, the issue is ARM's, not Apple's.
No they don’t.
Apple designs their own processors which are compatible with the ARMv8 ISA. The microarchitecture is 100% Apple.
Further, the only ARM processor susceptible to Meltdown is the brand-new A75. Previous cores were not, because they are a simpler design and are therefore immune. Apples A Series (which are far more advanced than any ARM design) are susceptible to Meltdown. Which shows that Apple is years ahead of ARM (at least when it comes to speculative execution).
I just like how they are trying to sue over something that has never impacted anyone. But no one sued Microsoft with all their security issues which in fact cost people and companies lost of money and time to deal with, how about when UK heath system was held for ransom do to security flaws in Windows.
File suit and I wonder how long before your license key is marked as a fake?
Personally, I strove to make the software I wrote (40+ years) as bug free as possible. One of my systems ran for 4 years without a bug report. That is not to say that there weren't any but the system was never operated in a way as to show them. I know that pretty well any software other than something as basic as
printing 'Hello World' on the terminal will have bugs. IT is just a question of when they surface rather than 'if'.