Buying an Intel processor right now may not be the most intelligent choice for those looking for a new central processing unit (CPU), as a critical security flaw has been discovered in the most recent generations of the company's processors.
Researchers from Google have unearthed a security lapse incorporated in a feature of Intel processors. The said flaw could leave users' PCs exposed to cyber attacks, which will let hackers have access to sensitive or personal data inside the computer. There is a remedy for the said flaw, though it reportedly will hamper the performance of the CPU, essentially a tradeoff between performance or security.
What is worse is that Intel's chips from the past decade, are the ones affected. This means the most common versions of Intel processors today, the Core series and all their generations, are also vulnerable to hackers.
"It's a big one and it's a severe one. This gives an attacker capabilities that bypass the common operating system security controls that we've relied on for 20 years. There's big impact on both the consumer and enterprise," said Forrester Research analyst Jeff Pollard.
Meanwhile, Intel has issued a statement to its consumer base that the issue is not exclusive for their CPUs and also affect its rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and another CPU manufacturer Advanced RISC Machine (ARM), which is known for manufacturing smartphone processors. Microsoft has also released a statement saying they have now introduced an update which will act as the said solution for the security flaw, but this might have a performance impact, which can be as big as a 30 percent slowdown.
It should be noted that while both Intel and AMD can both be affected by the security flaw, the former holds more shares in the market, meaning there are a lot more Intel users than there are AMD, hence the bigger impact on the bigger chip manufacturer. Google, in the meantime, has also rolled out a fix for its applications which may have been affected by the flaw.
