Intel faces 32 lawsuits over Spectre and Meltdown flaws

Last month, we reported about the flaw in chips of all major chipmakers including Intel. The potential impact of the major processor security flaw pointed out a question on various gadgets of some tech giants. Where, software companies have been quick to patch fixes for the first two reported flaws, Meltdown and Spectre, some are still struggling to find a way out of the mess.

Intel has patched most of the flawed chips and has expanded its bug bounty program to catch more issues like the extensive Meltdown and Spectre CPU flaws, but that didn’t change the mind of some angry chip owners. Intel has revealed in its annual SEC filing that it is facing 32 lawsuits over the Spectre and Meltdown attacks on its processors. While the Spectre problem is a near-universal issue faced by modern processors of almost all chip makers, the Meltdown attack is specific to processors from Intel and Apple, along with certain ARM designs that are coming to market shortly.

According to Intel’s filing, 30 of the cases are customer class-action suits from users claiming to be harmed by the flaws. The other two lawsuits are securities class actions that claim that Intel made misleading public statements during the six-month period after the company was notified of the problems but before the attacks were made public.

The Meltdown and Spectre flaws were present in CPUs dating back to 1995. As per SEC filing, a Google security team informed Intel about chip vulnerabilities that would later be called Meltdown and Spectre in June 2017. News about the flaws emerged in early January, and Intel rushed out patches, some so lousy that the company urged customers not to install them and wait for the next ones.