[tych0]

> Or does this refer to something else, besides safety checks?

I think it largely refers to the Spectre + Meltdown class of attacks, which caused the kernel to introduce a whole class of fixes (retpolines, etc.).

[pdpi]

Spectre and Meltdown are (presumably) not malicious hardware, they're hardware bugs that enable malicious software.

[zxzax]

Hmm, I think you're probably right, and I was overthinking it, thanks :)