The founder Joanna Rutkowska left QubesOS in 2018. All the code involved in this bug was committed by her successor Marek Marczykowski-Górecki.
Joanna seems to be a genuine good guy, she once wrote a paper titled "Intel x86 considered harmful". That's why Huawei and the Chinese government aren't even trying any more to make western CPU architectures secure, it's a hopeless cause.
Is there some evidence that x86 is uniquely prone to exploitable memory corruption? I haven't seen it, if so.
> That's why Huawei and the Chinese government aren't even trying any more to make western CPU architectures secure, it's a hopeless cause.
I suspect there are much more boring reasons for this, ranging from licensing to geopolitics (i.e., it being useful/valuable to have a domestic base of engineers who can design an ISA).
My understanding is that IME and PSP come more from the world of corporate compliance than anything else. In other words they exist for x86 because x86 gets deployed in corporate settings, and any ISA that attempts to occupy a similar niche will meet a similar fate.
Joanna seems to be a genuine good guy, she once wrote a paper titled "Intel x86 considered harmful". That's why Huawei and the Chinese government aren't even trying any more to make western CPU architectures secure, it's a hopeless cause.