Security Theater Costs Millions

I haven't seen ANY side-channel timing attacks performed in the real world, but that doesn't stop the Security Theater crowd from costing us hundreds of millions of dollars and megatons of unnecessary carbon emissions by slowing everyone's CPU performance on the grounds that everyone's threat model is the same.

A Hacker News post criticizes security practices that slow down everyone’s CPUs to defend against theoretical side-channel timing attacks. The joke is that “security theater” creates enormous financial and environmental costs despite no real-world examples, because organizations assume every user has the same threat model. EN: A Hacker News post criticizes security practices that slow down everyone’s CPUs to defend against theoretical side-channel timing attacks. The joke is that “security theater” creates enormous financial and environmental costs despite no real-world examples, because organizations assume every user has the same threat model.

• @gentoomemes / 18638 2025-09-16