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Intel announces security fixes for Spectre and Meltdown in upcoming chips

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CIOL Writers
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Early this year in January, the whole tech world braced two security attacks named Spectre and Meltdown that impacted every single Intel processor. The two vulnerabilities provided access to sensitive data such as username and password. Intel, therefore, announced security fixes for the vulnerabilities, but those resulted in many issues like causing machines to reboot and unpredictable system behaviour.

Now, the chipmaker has announced that the company’s next-gen Xeon and 8th-gen Intel Core processors — which are slated for release in the second half of 2018 — will include design changes designed to combat variants of the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said, "We have redesigned parts of the processor to introduce new levels of protection through partitioning that will protect against both Variants 2 and 3. Think of this partitioning as additional ‘protective walls’ between applications and user privilege levels to create an obstacle for bad actors.”



As for existing machines, Krzanich notes that Intel has rolled out microcode updates for  “100 percent of Intel products launched in the past five years that require protection.”

Additionally, Intel is also building hardware protections into its next-generation Xeon processors codenamed Cascade Lake. Along with the upcoming 8th generation CPUs, the redesigned silicon will "introduce new levels of protection through partitioning."

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