Before I even read this, I wondered if this is why my router's internet connection was reset when I changed my P45 chipset from AHCI (intel) to IDE (western digital) to use an old IDE hard drive (as slave/secondary). (running ssds on ide can show a similar impact in SSD performance) then suddenly abnormal pc behavior, my computer temporarily froze, and unfroze multiple times on boot, AND in windows also, like an I/o buffer overload (perhaps ahci/ide driver transition issue?). (this happened only once on boot, does spectre influence or utilize ahci architecture/ NCQ on motherboards?) Then immediately, out of the blue, my router lost connection with the net; my intuitive assumption was the router could easily have a similar virus as spectre in its own chips or firmware, communicating with spectre exploited computers on a network; sure enough I just read now "
Cisco Investigating Dozens Of Routers, Switches, Servers That May Be Affected By Spectre, Meltdown Exploits"
I'm sure there are so many little holes and bugs in the code of many devices, right down to floppy drives, bluetooth device firmware, and cdrom drive firmware. all it will take is an exploit to re-patch the firmware and microcodes back to exploitable status; or an already existing exploit similar to specre. antivirus software must adapt to this by copying and scanning microcodes and firmware for known exploits; open hardware is the future. im sure there are a tonne of viruses similar to spectre. My Asus P5Q motherboard was one of the first to come with an onboard rom with a built in linux distro allowing you to connect directly to the internet immediately at boot; im assuming this alone may be an exceptionally easy access backdoor into everything on my lan connection and possibly everything at a hardware level, similar to intel management.. how to test for these kinds of exploits; well a lot of money is to be made from this kind of thing! Keep up the great work guys!
