Security
How Short Sellers Built a Business on Security Bugs
Is it ethical for a security firm to give traders a first look at their research?
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The message came on the morning of March 12 like a warning shot—or, as executives at Advanced Micro Devices Inc. might have seen it, a sucker punch.
In an email sent to the general security inbox maintained by the Santa Clara, Calif., chipmaker, an executive of a security company located on the other side of the world claimed to have discovered 13 critical vulnerabilities in AMD’s line of chips. The alleged flaws, which the sender described in detail, could allow an attacker to get into the most secure part of AMD’s chips, where passwords and other sensitive information are typically stored. Any network with the faulty AMD processors, the researcher claimed, would be in serious danger.