Triple Meltdown: How so many researchers found a 20-year-old chip flaw at the same time

In transpires that Meltdown and Spectre, the two major security bugs recently announced in processors, were discovered by several researchers who all had the same idea at a similar time. This is despite the flaws having existed for decades.

Something happens in the community and it leads people to think, let’s look over here. And then they do. And it definitely occurs way more often than chance.

This fascinating article also considers how long intelligence agencies may have known about this and other computer security issues.