Intel Has to Delay Patches for new Spectre-NG Vulnerabilities
Last week we reported about Spectre-NG, eight new vulnerabilities similar to Spectre, of which four tagged as critical have been detected. Intel would have been working behind scenes on patching the new vulnerabilities, as it now seems it will take at least another two weeks before Intel can release the initial patches.
The news is reported today by Heise in Germany and is based on sources that are familiar with Intel's patch plans. From the looks of it, Intel is not capable of finishing up the patches before the disclosure publication date of what the new vulnerabilities mean and are. Up-to-now, any and all technical information on the Spectre-NG variants are disclosed. Likely all detected and to be published by Google Project Zero.
Intel set a new target for initial patches and firmware updates at the 21st of May, however also indicated they might not make that date and if so, requested technical disclosure until July 10th 2018. New microcode updates are due to be released on this date. At the same time, technical information on the nature of at least two of the Specter NG vulnerabilities are likely to be published. Heise states that a wide number of systems would be affected by the leaks including pretty much Core-i processors, Xeon variants, as well as Pentium and Celeron proc based Atom CPUs released ever since 2013. Later in August, it will address and patch the most serious leak that involves virtualized environments like cloud hosts, making it possible to obtain secure information directly from the CPU. The patch date for that specific vulnerability would be August 14 according to Heise. AMD has indicated it is investigating all reports. It is completely unclear whether the company was affected by the vulnerabilities as well.
To secure the architecture, Intel plans a combination of hardware updates in the form of new microcode and software improvements that the operating system manufacturers have to implement.
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Junior Member
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Joined: 2018-05-09
I am laughing, because comments here are funny. And I know exactly what's coming. I've seen effects of 1st patches and feel consequences even today...
So, what coming after following patches? HW refreshes. And guess whose CPUs are going to go into those data centers? Yep, again intel.
Somewhere for some smaller company there may be AMD server here and there. But in big business, you do not move to AMD as they are unable to supply required volume.
So intel actually getting boost in data center revenue. At least AMD is getting small part of pie.
AMD cannot supply required volume? What about in the past where AMD tried to provide 1 million plus processors for free so that HP will use their products? 1 million.
Senior Member
Posts: 6478
Joined: 2012-11-10
I don't think you fully understand how supply and demand works...
If you are limited to manufacturing 10 million units but you made a product so un-interesting that you give away 1 million of them, that is not a limitation on AMD's supply. When you have a chip that's actually in-demand and sold out everywhere, suddenly, 10 million is not enough.
Senior Member
Posts: 9224
Joined: 2006-10-29
I still have a laptop and low end PC with Intel cpus on them , i wonder if they will ever get patched :/
Senior Member
Posts: 1780
Joined: 2014-08-15
Of course not,for Intel only matter Skylake+ cpus. Plus old low-end laptop will have worst performance with these mitigate patches.
Senior Member
Posts: 203
Joined: 2009-05-11
This is what it really boils down to.
Damn, I missed to quote the one above me, but it really has to do with that Intel wanted new stuff out, and didnt really check the possible risk of not doing intence tests, much like microsoft did, earlier.
Just check the exploits that was known from windows 95, through w98, 98 SE, Millennium, XP, Vista, and windows 7/8.....
They had a cpu they "promised" the market, they had to finish it, and get it out, otherwise they would look stupid.
And now, the "evil" people, have much more training, in finding the weaknesses, so it's now ppl are getting aware that their cpu(s) might be a problem.