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Major flaw in millions of Intel chips revealed [View all]
A serious flaw in the design of Intel's chips will require Microsoft, Linux and Apple to update operating systems for computers around the world.
Intel has not yet released the details of the vulnerability, but it is believed to affect chips in millions of computers from the last decade.
The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said it was aware of the issue and that patches were being produced.
Some experts said a software fix could slow down computers.
--more--
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42553818
Intel has not yet released the details of the vulnerability, but it is believed to affect chips in millions of computers from the last decade.
The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said it was aware of the issue and that patches were being produced.
Some experts said a software fix could slow down computers.
--more--
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42553818
The immediate fix may slow down your Intel-based computer 5-30%
The Microsoft Windows patch comes Tuesday. Even if the patch does slow down software you use regularly it's still better to apply the patch than the alternative of not updating your operating system.
The Amazon "cloud" is updating Friday. It will be interesting to see if services utilizing Amazon's cloud suffer slowdowns, including Amazon itself and Netflix.
As an ordinary computer user there's not much you can do about this but watch and update your Intel machines when the patch is ready.
The bug in the hardware is a bad one, potentially allowing passwords and such to be stolen, or malevolent software to be installed, but I haven't heard of any bad guys exploiting it yet.
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