Google discloses the vulnerability to Intel in June. On October 26th, Intel files its quarterly numbers and makes no mention of Project Zero or the word "vulnerability" and fails, in Item 1A, to disclose any new risk factors [1]. On October 30th, Krzanich puts in trading instructions [2]. On November 29th, the trades occur; on December 1st, their confirmations are disclosed [2].<p>I'm not an expert on the sale of stock in public companies by insiders. But implementing sale instructions after finding a material risk factor <i>and</i> a filing that fails to reveal it looks shady.<p>(I continue to default to the assumption of sloppiness over bad intent, though even that is harshly punishable, albeit with fines versus jail time.)<p>[1] <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/50863/000005086317000048/a2017q3-10qdocument.htm#sEC4B4E5BB2945CE9B97383143D9B5368" rel="nofollow">https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/50863/00000508631700...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/50863/000112760217033679/xslF345X03/form4.xml" rel="nofollow">https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/50863/00011276021703...</a> <i>Explanation 1</i>
One major counterpoint:<p>What would have happened if the AMD developer on the LKML hadn't said "AMD chips aren't affected by [one of the bugs]" before the big public post? The big headlines would have all been about "major class of speculative execution bugs that cause data exfiltration on ARM, AMD, and Intel hardware." Only one of the bugs is Intel-specific (admittedly, the worst one), but even the Project Zero blogpost points out that it mostly focused on attacking Haswell microarchitecture.<p>So while Intel does have some egg on its face, ARM and AMD aren't exactly out of the woods yet. Side-channel attacks as a result of speculative execution are sort of a well-known idea, but the main big news is that they are practical to exploit and exfiltrate data. I would not be surprised to see more exploits of this type affecting different hardware vendors come out over the next year. The reason why there's so much focus on Intel is because people trying to reverse-engineer the exploit found the message saying "AMD not affected" and didn't realize that AMD <i>is</i> affected by <i>some</i> of the bugs.<p>Quite likely, whatever internal announcements that would have filtered up to the CEO would have focussed on the fact that other vendors are seeing some impact from these bugs (if nothing else, professional ass-covering). So it's hard to see how the CEO would actually find this information out even internally.<p>Edit: to put it more succinctly, Intel appears to have been preparing for an announcement of "Major class of speculative execution vulnerabilities [with particular impact to Intel]." However, the way the announcement came out was "Apparent major bug... that's Intel-specific... oh, here's the details of this bug [with related bugs affecting everybody]." That doesn't scream insider trading to me.
Interesting to compare the reactions in this thread from 1 day ago:<p>"Intel's CEO Just Sold a Lot of Stock"<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16055851" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16055851</a>
This looks really bad from a PR perspective. Huge performance effecting security vulnerability and their CEO might have traded on insider info, doesn't look good.<p>I hope their lawyers have been productive these last few months before this all went public.
Rather damning: "Krzanich's [Rule 10b5-1(c)] plan was created on October 30 and by Intel's own admission, the company learned of the chip vulnerability in June."
The stock seems to be doing fine. Overvalued even perhaps. A P/E of 42 when you have Nvidia hitting them on the high end, Apple and ARM hitting them on the low end, and AMD continuing to commoditize their offerings? I personally would not buy or hold at that price. I don't think there's anything illegal about selling the shares as soon as he executed on them, as he'll need to at least sell some to cover the tax liability, I think.
Do we already have hints who's doing a power play here? I mean even the leak was a surprise to companies like Google as I see it. Is there someone who wants to become CEO at Intel or a bigger company that wants to become a majority stake holder?
Isn't this a case that describes the benefits of insider trading? Him being able to sell his stock in the company alerted everyone that something may be up.