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Intel told Chinese firms about chip flaw before US gov: report Intel Corporation initially warned a handful of customers, including several Chinese technology firms, about security flaws within its processor chips, while at the same time not telling the U.S. government, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. Security experts told the newspaper that the decision could have allowed Chinese tech companies to flag the vulnerabilities to Beijing, giving the Chinese government opportunity to exploit them. Jake Williams, head of the security company Rendition Infosec and former National Security Agency (NSA) employee, told the Journal that it is a “near certainty”...

Qualcomm has confirmed its processors have the same security vulnerabilities disclosed this week in Intel, Arm and AMD CPU cores this week.The California tech giant picked the favored Friday US West Coast afternoon "news dump" slot to admit at least some of its billions of Arm-compatible Snapdragon system-on-chips and newly released Centriq server-grade processors are subject to the Meltdown and/or Spectre data-theft bugs."Qualcomm Technologies, Inc is aware of the security research on industry-wide processor vulnerabilities that have been reported," a spokesperson for Qualcomm told The Register."Providing technologies that support robust security and privacy is a priority for Qualcomm, and as...

What are Meltdown and Spectre? Do they only affect Intel chips? Will the fixes slow my computer … and what even is a processor? Meltdown and Spectre are the names of two serious security flaws that have been found within computer processors. They could allow hackers to steal sensitive data without users knowing, one of them affecting chips made as far back as 1995. What are Meltdown and Spectre? Meltdown is a security flaw that could allow hackers to bypass the hardware barrier between applications run by users and the computer’s core memory, which is normally highly protected. Spectre is...

Two major flaws in computer chips could leave a huge number of computers and smartphones vulnerable to security concerns, researchers revealed Wednesday. And a U.S. government-backed body warned that the chips themselves need to be replaced to completely fix the problems. The flaws could allow an attacker to read sensitive data stored in the memory, like passwords, or look at what tabs someone has open on their computer, researchers found. Daniel Gruss, a researcher from Graz University of Technology who helped identify the flaw, said it may be difficult to execute an attack, but billions of devices were impacted. Related:...

Apple’s iPhones, iPads and Mac computers are all vulnerable to the major processor flaws revealed on Wednesday, the company has warned, but it says updates are already available. The flaws known as Meltdown and Spectre affect almost every modern computing device from all manufacturers using chip designs from Intel, AMD and ARM. Apple uses Intel processors in its Mac computers and ARM-based designs for its A-series processors used in the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Apple Watch lines. Apple said: “All Mac systems and iOS devices are affected, but there are no known exploits impacting customers at this time.” The...

Like the Meltdown bug, the Spectre bug is a hardware bug in the form of a CPU design flaw. Unlike the Meltdown bug which only affects Intel processors, the Spectre bug impacts Intel, AMD, and some ARM (used in many smart phones and other mobile devices) processors. These three are by far the most common CPUs on the planet, running literally billions of devices. In a Spectre attack, the CPU is tricked into executing instructions that it normally would not, causing leaks in the victims memory address space.

Microsoft has warned some PC users they will not be able to apply an emergency Windows patch because their security software is incompatible. The out-of-bounds update was issued by Microsoft yesterday to address the Meltdown and Spectre flaws in Intel chips. These vulnerabilities affect most PCs and servers, and can be exploited to allow an attacker to read sensitive information, such as passwords, from protected memory. The Spectre flaw also affects AMD chips, but is considerably more difficult to exploit, as well as a small number of Arm-based processors. However, not every Microsoft system will be able to apply the...

What is the Meltdown bug? Most of the bugs that make the news are software bugs, but the Meltdown bug is a hardware bug (in the form of a design flaw) that affects Intel processors going back several generations. In a nut shell, the Meltdown bug is a brand new way to (possibly) steal your information.

Only Intel machines are affected by Meltdown Details have emerged on two major processor security flaws this week, and the industry is scrambling to issue fixes and secure machines for customers. Dubbed “Meltdown” and “Spectre,” the flaws affect nearly every device made in the past 20 years. The Meltdown flaw only affects Intel processors, and researchers have already released proof of concept code that could lead to attacks using Meltdown. The vulnerabilities allow an attacker to compromise the privileged memory of a processor by exploiting the way processes run in parallel. They also allow an attacker to use JavaScript code...