Here is a study from 1995 which was paid for by the NSA (I guess that is what “under the auspices” means?) and that comes to very frightening findings. Well, at least if you’re in security and IT:
“An in-depth analysis of the 80×86 processor families identifes architectural properties that may have unexpected, and undesirable, results in secure com-
puter systems. In addition, reported implementation errors in some processor versions render them undesirable for secure systems because of potential security and reliability problems.”
“This analysis is being performed under the auspices of the National Security Agency’s Trusted Product Evaluation Program (TPEP).”
I think this study sheds a strange light on the following quote from the Washington post:
“Rob Joyce, White House cybersecurity coordinator, said, “NSA did not know about the flaw, has not exploited it and certainly the U.S. government would
never put a major company like Intel in a position of risk like this to try to hold open a vulnerability.”