Apple under fire from U.S.-based class action suit over Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabiliti...
Apple has become the target for another class action suit over the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities found in Intel and ARM-based processors, as a suit filed in the California U.S. district court is going after the company for designing the A-series processors bearing these same defects.
The class action filing by legal firm Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz was filed on Jan. 8, at the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California. The filing lists Jacqueline Olson and Anthony Bartling as the plaintiffs, identified as owners of various iPhone models, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated as part of the class complaint.
It is alleged that all Apple Processors are defective because they were designed in a way that allows hackers and malicious programs potential access to highly secure information stored on iDevices. Noting the revelations of Meltdown and Spectre in Intel chips, the complaint acknowledges that a patch to protect from Meltdown is available, but will result in a reduction in processing speed for the chip.
For Spectre, the complaint asserts there is no complete firmware or software patch for the vulnerability at this time, adding that it is not precisely known if any patches or firmware to defeat it could do so without slowing the processor's speed. A long term solution to completely eliminate the risk of the Spectre issue may require the development of new hardware and/or architectures, states the filing.
Because of this, it is claimed that Apple has not been able to offer an effective repair to its customers, in that a patch affecting processor performance is not a legitimate solution, as is any patch that can fully eliminate the vulnerabilities altogether.
"Plaintiffs would not have purchased the iDevices had they known of the Security Vulnerabilities," write the complainants, offering no suggestions for what they would have purchased otherwise. "Or they would not have paid the prices they paid for the iDevices (in which the Apples Processors were a component) had they known that they would be subject to the Security Vulnerabilities as well as a slowdown in speed and thus decrease in quality and value."
The complaint also claims Apple has known about the defects since at least June of 2017. While Apple admitted the vulnerability affects its devices, and had released an iOS update to address Meltdown in December, the filing suggests Apple knew or should have known of the design defect much earlier and could have disclosed the design defect more promptly.
Due to knowing about the issue and continuing to sell affected devices without repairing or warning of the vulnerability beforehand, the suit alleges the iDevices it sold and distributed were not of the quality represented and were not fit for their ordinary purposes.
The filing insists that there are at least 100 members in the proposed class that have been affected by the issue, and the aggregated claims of the members will exceed the sum of $5 million if the suit proceeds and is found in its favor.
This is not the only class action suit Apple has become involved with relating to Meltdown and Spectre, as a separate class action suit taking on Apple, Intel, and ARM over the matter has recently been filed in Israel.
Intel has been the main subject of the lawsuits, both from those claiming it has affected consumers as well as those on behalf of shareholders.
The class action filing by legal firm Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz was filed on Jan. 8, at the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California. The filing lists Jacqueline Olson and Anthony Bartling as the plaintiffs, identified as owners of various iPhone models, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated as part of the class complaint.
It is alleged that all Apple Processors are defective because they were designed in a way that allows hackers and malicious programs potential access to highly secure information stored on iDevices. Noting the revelations of Meltdown and Spectre in Intel chips, the complaint acknowledges that a patch to protect from Meltdown is available, but will result in a reduction in processing speed for the chip.
For Spectre, the complaint asserts there is no complete firmware or software patch for the vulnerability at this time, adding that it is not precisely known if any patches or firmware to defeat it could do so without slowing the processor's speed. A long term solution to completely eliminate the risk of the Spectre issue may require the development of new hardware and/or architectures, states the filing.
Because of this, it is claimed that Apple has not been able to offer an effective repair to its customers, in that a patch affecting processor performance is not a legitimate solution, as is any patch that can fully eliminate the vulnerabilities altogether.
"Plaintiffs would not have purchased the iDevices had they known of the Security Vulnerabilities," write the complainants, offering no suggestions for what they would have purchased otherwise. "Or they would not have paid the prices they paid for the iDevices (in which the Apples Processors were a component) had they known that they would be subject to the Security Vulnerabilities as well as a slowdown in speed and thus decrease in quality and value."
The complaint also claims Apple has known about the defects since at least June of 2017. While Apple admitted the vulnerability affects its devices, and had released an iOS update to address Meltdown in December, the filing suggests Apple knew or should have known of the design defect much earlier and could have disclosed the design defect more promptly.
Due to knowing about the issue and continuing to sell affected devices without repairing or warning of the vulnerability beforehand, the suit alleges the iDevices it sold and distributed were not of the quality represented and were not fit for their ordinary purposes.
The filing insists that there are at least 100 members in the proposed class that have been affected by the issue, and the aggregated claims of the members will exceed the sum of $5 million if the suit proceeds and is found in its favor.
This is not the only class action suit Apple has become involved with relating to Meltdown and Spectre, as a separate class action suit taking on Apple, Intel, and ARM over the matter has recently been filed in Israel.
Intel has been the main subject of the lawsuits, both from those claiming it has affected consumers as well as those on behalf of shareholders.
Comments
If you are going to make the claim of "harm", live up to your claim.
The software workarounds needed to mitigate Spectre/Meltdown have absolutely zero impact on the processing speed of the chip. A 2.4 GHz A-series chip will still be running at the full 2.4 GHz. The only thing that is impacted are software applications that make heavy use of the affected microcode operations. This varies substantially between software applications. So what these dirtbags are claiming is that the fixes put in place for the microprocessor bugs is resulting in a reduction in software application performance ... which begs the following questions:
1) Which software applications are experiencing a slowdown?
2) What is the percentage reduction for each software application?
3) What is the guaranteed software application performance that they purchased with a service level agreement (SLA) contract from each software vendor?
4) What remedies do each of the software vendors they have a SLA with provide?
5) What is the amount of financial hardship imposed on the damaged parties from the affected software applications?
I'm sure there are several more questions to be asked.
My expectation is that the misfits filing this claim would answer these questions as follows:
1) I don't know.
2) I don't know. But the internet told me they might be 30% slower. My life is ruined.
3) I have no SLAs or QoS contracts for any of my software. Or my hardware. What's an SLA?
4) None.
5) One million dollars, but I would settle for whatever three big bags of crack (or meth) cost these days.
The bottom line is that a software application can suffer from a similar or greater magnitude of performance reductions as what these bug fixes impose simply from having the wrong compiler setting, using outdated libraries, inefficient design, any number of software development related maladies, the inclusion of exception handling logic that was previously omitted (intentionally or accidentily), etc. Are we going to start suing software vendors for any modifications performed to existing applications that result in a performance degradation of a software application? If so, every software vendor is universally screwed and should consider an entirely new line of work, like chasing ambulances, lobbying politicians, making YouTube videos, or initiating class action lawsuits against any entity that still has sufficient money to harvest - like law firms.
Unless someone comes up with some evidence that this flaw was discovered but knowingly ignored and kept out of the public eye (something that would probably put intel into a tailspin, not Apple), I don't think there's much that can be done save for mitigation and trying to get updates out for as many devices as possible.
The flaws in question are from that point, and not developed as per any lack of insight or understanding on Apple's part; this is something shared by the entire IT world and all major CPU's made in the last 23 years!
If a judge doesn’t throw this out the system is broken.
More importantly the defect in the case of Apples I devices isn't a big deal. The performance degradation isn't any worst than many of the OS upgrades we get ever few months. Seriously most iPhones get slower with every new iOS release so this isn't out of the ordinary. So yeah greed and lawyers proving themselves to be assholes.
Well you will have a hard time selling that to a jury when the lawyers hold up an AMD chip that doens't suffer from Meltdown. As for an understanding on Apples part the research into these defects has been on going, it isn't like the issues where just raised in December of 2017.
In a nut shell people need to separate what Apple is responsible for from the idiocy of the lawyers in this case. Apple designed a chip with a flaw, that is their responsibility. Speaking of flaws almost every modern chip has a significant errata sheet that informs people of known issues with a processor, flaws are nothing new in these devices. Again defects are the norm not something that almost never happens, unfortunately this issue has been blown out of proportion with respect to its impact on casual users. The people that will really suffer are the data center users that have machines serving hundreds of users and thousands of processes. I'm not even sure if the hit on iOS devices has been tested nor if it is significant for most users.
Yet this law firm of Putz, Inept and Groveling goes forward anyhow.
If the law does not say using marijuanas is not allowed while driving then the people of California is guilty not just the driver. Because the law does not inform first time user the danger of using it.
VEHICLE CODE - VEH
DIVISION 11. RULES OF THE ROAD [21000 - 23336]
( Division 11 enacted by Stats. 1959, Ch. 3. )CHAPTER 12. Public Offenses [23100 - 23249.50]
( Chapter 12 enacted by Stats. 1959, Ch. 3. )ARTICLE 2. Offenses Involving Alcohol and Drugs [23152 - 23229.1]
( Article 2 added by Stats. 1981, Ch. 940, Sec. 32. )