On 1/14/2018 9:04 AM, John Heritage via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I just wanted to report my 68020 powered Amiga 1200 is surfing the web securely despite the new vulnerabilities.. My 68000 based Mega STE with NIC also seemed unaffected.
I haven't dialed any BBSes lately on my Atari 800XL, but I'm pretty confident that machine is safe too.
I felt these were pretty risky as they are "modern" machines with complex custom chips, but they seem to be doing OK. So far I haven't heard of any floppy virus variants of Meltdown/Spectre.
I hope everyone else has vintage machines available to survive the security apocalypse this year :)
But the code I arranged to have embedded in all the Amiga terminal emulators long ago has silently transferred all your IFF files to me. Bwa ha ha ha haaaaaaaaa :O :) I like the sentiment. The thought that our vintage computers could come back to help us, in the face of some modern computer problem, as you are projecting here, is appealing to us in the hobby. Using old computers for a security reason has been used at least a few times as a TV and movie plot. I recall Leverage S03E02- The Reunion Job- featured a TRS-80 holding an access code or something, off line, so it couldn't be physically hacked. They had to use social hacking to get at it. Good stuff.