Intel one of the largest chip makers in the world has been reportedly hit by a security bug in its decade-old processors. The security flaw is more likely to be found in various gadgets of all big players including Apple, Lenovo, HP, and Dell, which relies upon Intel’s processors in their devices. The processors are facing severe security bug which is quite difficult to fix.
A report from The Register has surfaced which claims that the security flaw has been determined in the fundamental design of the chips. The security loophole in Intel processors has been there for past 10 years and is even present in modern processors. The bug allows the user to get access to the contents of protected kernel memory, which means that it could be easily exploited by hackers to explore other security bugs. According to the report,
“The kernel’s memory space is hidden from user processes and programs because it may contain all sorts of secrets, such as passwords, login keys, files cached from disk, and so on. Imagine a piece of JavaScript running in a browser, or malicious software running on a shared public cloud server, able to sniff sensitive kernel-protected data.”
The bug also affected Intel-powered Macs of Apple as the flaw has also been reported in the Intel’s X86 hardware. Whereas, AppleInsider reports that Apple released an update of macOS 10.13.2 on 6th of December, last year. which already fixed the kernel security bug.
The developers of Linux and Microsoft are still in the process of deploying their respective fixes to resolve kernel security bug.
Meanwhile, a new statement by Intel, confirmed by 9to5Mac, reveals that not only Intel but the processors of ARM and AMD have also been affected by the bug. The statement points out towards developing to an “industry-wide approach” to tackle the issue.
