Spectre, Meltdown CPU bugs: Intel promises fix but it may slow down computers

Security flaw to wreak havoc for ‘Intel’

Developers are scrambling to fix the significant security hole within the Intel chips (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

A major security flaw that can affect millions of computers running Windows, macOS, and Linux has been found in the processors manufactured by American tech company, Intel.

According to The Guardian, developers are currently scrambling behind the scenes to fix the significant security hole within the Intel chips, with patches already available within some versions of Linux and some testing versions of Windows. Further, the fixes in all likelihood will significantly slow down computers.

The specific details of the flaw, which appears to affect all Intel processors made in the last decade have not been released to the public.

It is however, feared that the security flaw within the Intel processors could reportedly be used to access passwords, login details and other personal information on the computer. The security flaw could also affect cloud servers with Amazon, Microsoft, and Google all expected to have to fix the bug with similar performance-reducing patches.

Meanwhile, Intel said that it was aware about the latest security bug found by Google's Project Zero team.

"Intel is committed to product and customer security and is working closely with many other technology companies, including AMD, ARM Holdings and several operating system vendors, to develop an industry-wide approach to resolve this issue promptly and constructively. Intel has begun providing software and firmware updates to mitigate these exploits. Contrary to some reports, any performance impacts are workload-dependent, and, for the average computer user, should not be significant and will be mitigated over time." said the company in a blog post.

"Intel is committed to the industry best practice of responsible disclosure of potential security issues, which is why Intel and other vendors had planned to disclose this issue next week when more software and firmware updates will be available. However, Intel is making this statement today because of the current inaccurate media reports," it added.

Earlier, Google researchers in a detailed report revealed "Spectre" and "Meltdown" vulnerabilities in the modern devices running Intel, AMD and other popular chips. The new vulnerabilities are dubbed as one of the worst CPU bugs ever.