Kian Hagerman
Mesa CC Legend
In a series of statements released over the course of January, Intel Corporation sought to address concerns raised about the potential to exploit their Central Processing Unit (CPU) products. The exploits being addressed which are referred to as “Spectre” and “Meltdown” were reported initially by Google Project Zero, and take advantage of side-channel analysis according to Intel, which analyzes information related to the physical operation of a computer like power consumption and sounds emitted to potentially expose data unintentionally.
Intel’s initial response was intended to correct reporting on the available information regarding the recent discovery of these exploits so that consumers were aware that according to Intel these exploits were not uniquely a problem of the company’s products. Firmware updates were released to “mitigate these exploits,” which the statement went on to say would not significantly impact the performance of systems updated.
Following the release of updates for 90 percent of Intel CPUs released in the last 5 years, a higher incidence of reboots was reported to Intel by their customers who had updated, according to another statement.The cause of these reboots have, according to Intel been identified and the most recent statement on the matter stated that an updated solution was being tested as of Jan. 22. Intel continues to suggest that all customers keep systems updated as much as possible and maintain best practices when it comes to security for their systems in the same Jan. 22 statement.
