The NSA almost certainly knew about Meltdown and Spectre

PLUS: The lab where Amazon's Alexa takes over the world, Facebook's reelection campaign, and a promising breakthrough in the fight to end the opioid crisis. [View this email in your browser](#SPCLICKTOVIEW) [logo]( [[WIRED Magazine]1.8.18]( A pair of security vulnerabilities, [Meltdown and Spectre]( could compromise basic security for practically all computers. Meltdown allows malicious programs snoop around high-privileged parts of your computer's memory, like your private files, passwords, or cryptographic keys, while Spectre lifts data from the memory of other applications you’re running. The problem springs from a decades-old bug in Intel chips that was uncovered near-simultaneously by [multiple researchers last week](. "It was really, really scary," says Daniel Grüss, one of the researchers who discovered Meltdown. "You don’t expect your private conversations to come out of a program with no permissions at all to access that data." But even as everyone from hardware companies to cloud computing services race to issue emergency patches, one entity is probably not especially surprised. "If you asked me whether intelligence agencies found this years ago, I would guess certainly yes," Paul Kocher, a well-known security researcher, says. "And if they found something like this, as long as it's yielding good intelligence, they don’t tell anyone." Also: the lab where Amazon’s Alexa [takes over the world]( [Mark Zuckerberg’s plan]( to get Facebook back into your good graces, and not one but two stories about the [kappa receptor]( and [related breakthroughs]( that could help solve the opioid crisis. collisions Triple Meltdown: How So Many Researchers Found a 20-Year-Old Chip Flaw At the Same Time By Andy Greenberg The synchronicity of those processor attack findings, argues security researcher and Harvard Belfer Center fellow Bruce Schneier, represents not just an isolated mystery but a policy lesson: When intelligence agencies like the NSA discover hackable vulnerabilities and exploit them in secret, they can't assume those bugs won't be rediscovered by other hackers in what the security industry calls a "bug collision." Chemistry Scientists Just Solved a Major Piece of the Opioid Puzzle By Robbie Gonzalez Scientists have identified four opioid receptors, which they've named mu, delta, kappa, and nociceptin. Drugs like fentanyl, heroin, morphine, and oxycodone are particularly fond of the mu opioid receptor. Facebook Mark Zuckerberg Essentially Launched Facebook’s Reelection Campaign By Nitasha Tiku "The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot of work to do—whether it's protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent.” CES 2018 Inside the Lab Where Amazon's Alexa Takes Over The World By David Pierce Cars and trucks and bicycles, sure; all your home appliances, switches, bulbs, and fixtures; even your clothes, shoes, and jewelry. They're all coming online, and Amazon wants Alexa in all of them. [advertisement]( [Powered by LiveIntent]( [Ad Choices]( [WIRED Magazine Subscription] Get Wired Don't Let the Future Leave You Behind. Get 12 Months of WIRED Magazine for Just $10. 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It has a simple aim: climb this mountain. The only problem is that your character is a man stuck inside a pot, his only climbing implement a hammer he can swing. photo gallery The Hellish E-Waste Graveyards Where Computers Are Mined for Metal By Michael Hardy German photographer Kai Löffelbein spent seven years documenting how those metals are extracted, often under dangerous conditions, by some of the world’s poorest people. [advertisement]( [Powered by LiveIntent]( [AdChoices]( [WIRED Magazine]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Pinterest]( [Youtube]( [Instagram]( This e-mail was sent to you by WIRED. To ensure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add our e-mail address, wired@newsletters.wired.com, to your address book. View our [Privacy Policy]( [Unsubscribe](#SPCUSTOMOPTOUT) Copyright © Condé Nast 2018. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved. 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