Thanks forPosting WDF,
It's going to be very interesting when all the fixes, patches, firmware tweaks are put into place just how much compute performance the industry is going to lose until all the silicon is refreshed. Cloud operations that are running close to optimally will probably need to put a few more servers on the fire, and applications and services running on choke points such as(dare I say security) appliances(you know all those fancy edge firewalls etc) my need more tin for throughput.
Intel(and others) have an interesting problem I think on three fronts(a number of lawsuits) https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/05/intel-faces-multiple-lawsuits-spectre-meltdown-vulnerabilities/, shifting the affected inventory that they have not sold as yet(if I have enough capacity and commercial savvy I'm going to put the thumbscrews on), and putting in better QA and re-tooling to make better product.
Now you can set that off against a massive opportunity for silicon manufactures, all the components that sustain humanity and it's various hobbies will need replacement after the higher levels of scrutiny required are put into place, but even so bumpy ride...
Your last point on NettApp reminds me of a conversation I once had with a tin foil hatter on a particular vulnerability - as these were not high assurance systems I walked away in the end leaving it with something along the lines of:
"So, if the attacker roots the box, and has arbitrary code execution then they could execute code that would retrieve the encryption key from memory if you hadn't scrubbed it by then and allow them to steal the users non-adminstative credentials? Maybe, I'll just install a key logger and wait..."
Not the same thing, and obviously closing off every vulnerability is a good thing, but the remote vs local exploitability debate that happens in triage is always interesting, and when something affects everything what do you do first?
