Developers are currently in the midst of fixing the bug within Intel’s x86-64 hardware, which has affected millions of computers operating almost every system including Windows, macOS and Linux.
Specific details of the security flaw have not been made public, as of yet, however, it has affected nearly all Intel processors made in the last decade, therefore, leaving millions of computers threatened and cease to work effectively.
“Modern operating systems rely upon Intel’s chips to provide some essential security services – but if a flaw has been found then the operating systems themselves will need to be updated to do the job that they believed Intel’s chips were doing properly,” independent security expert Graham Cluley told the Guardian.
The bug fixes will involve transporting the memory of the core of the computer operating system, the kernel, to another location away from the memory used by normal programs including JavaScript on websites and PC games.
Patches that developers are working on to fix the problem are expected to significantly slow down computers with developers suspecting computers will be slowed down between 5% and 30% depending on the task wanted to be ran and the processor model.
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Not only are the fixes expected to slow performance on the computers, but cloud servers as well that have been affected including Amazon, Microsoft and Google that now need patches to savour the systems.
The security flaw is seemingly needing a larger update to fix the bug that has got into Intel’s processors, which suggests although the scale of the problem has not been announced it is much larger than what I being let on.
Intel has not made a comment on the ordeal, but fixes for operating systems should be available later by the end of this week.
