Intel still testing Spectre Variant 2 patches for some chips

Feb 19, 2018 09:49 GMT  ·  By

The Meltdown and Spectre nightmare is far from being over for Intel, as the company is yet to release all security fixes for Variant 2 of the latter, and at the same time, it has to face no more, no less than 32 lawsuits.

In an SEC filling late last week, Intel revealed that there had been 30 customer class action lawsuits and two securities class action lawsuits against the company, with three shareholders also filing derivate actions following claims of alleged insider trading.

While the class action lawsuits have been filed because Intel hasn’t informed customers about the security flaws in its hardware, the securities claims accuse the company of violating laws that eventually affected the businesses of the parties that purchased stock last year.

Spectre Variant 2 fixes still in the works

Intel, however, is ready to go to court and fight all the claims, explaining that it can’t estimate if the company would record any losses following the lawsuits or not.

“We dispute the claims described above and intend to defend the lawsuits vigorously.

Given the procedural posture and the nature of these cases, including that the proceedings are in the early stages, that alleged damages have not been specified, that uncertainty exists as to the likelihood of a class or classes being certified or the ultimate size of any class or classes if certified, and that there are significant factual and legal issues to be resolved, we are unable to make a reasonable estimate of the potential loss or range of losses, if any, that might arise from these matters.”

Intel is still working on rolling out security patches addressing the Spectre Variant 2 vulnerability on its older chips, after it previously published updates for the Skylake chipset. Intel promised to release these fixes in the coming weeks, as the company pulled them in late January after discovering unexpected reboots on its hardware.