Intel says it will patch 90 percent of recent chips by next week (updated)
A little more than a day since Google Project Zero went public with its findings regarding a major security flaw in Intel ( and others ) chip designs, the company announced that it is already is pushing out patches to eliminate the vulnerability. Intel has "already issued updates for the majority of processor products introduced within the past five years," per the company press release, and expects to have 90 percent of affected chips produced within the past five years patched by the end of the week. The flaw, which afflicts chips made over the past decade, enables ordinary processes to determine the layout of protected kernel memory. This "software analysis method", as Intel describes the flaw, allows a pair of exploits, dubbed "Meltdown" and "Spectre," to swipe data from other apps on vulnerable devices -- be they PCs, servers or mobile phones -- running Intel, ARM or AMD chips. The solution cooked up by Intel and its partners so far e...