I would not be reassured by someone telling me "well, most of the time, there's too much noise to get a reliable side channel out of Spectre."
Unfortunately, the standards have fallen. The security community is one of the worst instances of the lack of skepticism in the science arena. The community has started to reward clickbaity papers because they "sell". It's a race to the bottom.
It is valuable research if someone can take it to the next step. Inasmuch, it is definitely worthy of publishing.
I suspect that some the worst are seeded and encouraged by parties who benefit from a lack of trust in research and maximum chaos.
But there should be a distinction between academic conferences where professors from U. Mich are publishing and practitioner conferences aimed at industry (including sales, etc.).
My criticism is about academic conferences -- there's little skepticism left when reviewing papers describing attacks. As long as it's cool, it's in.
Look at the title above: "Hard Drive of Hearing: Disks that Eavesdrop...". It's not far off from the headlines on CNN or Fox News. At this rate, I predict by 2025 we'll have Breaking News red banners on academic conferences sites.
Let me re-assure everyone out there ... No, your disks are not eavesdropping. Disks eavesdropping should be the least of your worries security-wise.
Sure, but think about how many people will refuse your statement and - thanks to the article - will start to believe that aliens use hard disk recordings before abducting them.
The damage has alas already been done, on - quite frankly - a very thin basis, your general criticism is very well founded, a "reputable" institution would (should) never accept those clickbaity titles.
There is no truly secure computer system because there is no security from laws of nature and human avarice. There’s always a relative position from which one can get the data they need.
The best security we have is competent, functioning government diffusing and negotiating stable arrangements.
IMO we’ve pushed too many paranoias from social norms into products we build. Your data isn’t secure and there is no changing that.
And really the data isn’t THAT valuable. We’re just excited by a new level of granularity. This is promises of “nuclear powered rocket cars” all over again.
Sure there’s some novelty coming from it in scientific realms, but it’s largely useless to day to day life (only a truly lazy person can’t be bothered to phone call in their hair appointments).
Steve Bannon got all !! over data showing people that live by a church.... go to the church. Pretty sure that was already well known.
That’s the sort of “value” we’re achieving with all this big data. Obvious answers we’re already familiar with. Cause there are few interesting questions left to be asked about us in a context of “who are we in daily life.”