Following the quite public concern over the “Spectre” and “Meltdown” vulnerabilities found in Intel (and other) processors, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich penned an open letter to reaffirm the company’s commitment to security.
Kzranich states once more how 90% of CPUs introduced in the past 5 years have already had updates issued, with the remainder hitting by the end of January.
Apple released their own patches for iOS and macOS devices with the iOS 11.2.2 and macOS 10.13.12 updates that were issued this week.
In the future, Intel promises to be timely and transparent regarding communications and will give updates on the progress regarding the remaining CPUs.
Our customers’ security is an ongoing priority, not a one-time event. To accelerate the security of the entire industry, we commit to publicly identify significant security vulnerabilities following rules of responsible disclosure and, further, we commit to working with the industry to share hardware innovations that will accelerate industry-level progress in dealing with side-channel attacks. We also commit to adding incremental funding for academic and independent research into potential security threats.
As a refresher, Spectre and Meltdown are hardware-based vulnerabilities found in nearly all modern CPUs. That includes iOS and macOS devices. As the news of the vulnerabilities was leaked early (bugs are often kept confidential until enough time has passed for them to be fixed whenever possible), manufacturers scrambled to issue patches to address them.
Head over to Intel’s newsroom to read the letter in full.