14 DAY TRIAL // Intel has already released updates to fix the already-infamous Meltdown and Spectre security vulnerabilities affecting the chips it manufactured in the last 20 years, and the company is very optimistic about how fast it’ll be able to exterminate the two bugs.
In a press release (embedded below) announcing the “significant progress in deploying updates as software patches and firmware updates,” Intel explains that it will block the two vulnerabilities on no less than 90% of impacted devices by the end of the week, with the company to then continue work on addressing the remain 10%.
“By the end of next week, Intel expects to have issued updates for more than 90 percent of processor products introduced within the past five years,” Intel says.
While Intel is indeed working with partners and device manufacturers to ship updates, this doesn’t necessarily mean that all users will install them as soon as they become available.
Deployment is expected to be particularly troublesome in the enterprise where additional steps and system reboots are required, and despite the high severity of the vulnerabilities, some IT admins could delay installing patches. This means that even though Intel will indeed make the patches available for 90% of impacted devices by the end of the next week, some of them would still remain vulnerable to attacks.
Updates already available
Operating system companies have already shipped updates are in the process of doing it. Microsoft rolled out Windows updates yesterday, while Apple said that the latest version of macOS includes patches for both Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities. Linux developing companies have announced updates as well.
“Many operating system vendors, public cloud service providers, device manufacturers and others have indicated that they have already updated their products and services,” Intel highlighted in its press release. “System updates are made available by system manufacturers, operating system providers and others.”
Contrary to speculation, Intel says no noticeable performance drop would be experienced following installing these updates, though the company itself suggests that in some cases a slowdown could be observed. The firm says the performance impact is highly workload-dependent, but then goes on to add that it won’t be significant for the average computer user.
In other words, some slowdowns could indeed happen and might be noticeable especially on high-performance machines. Intel, however, promises all these side-effects “will be mitigated over time.”