This week the world has discovered a design flaw in Intel's CPUs that is causing a major security bug. According to the latest informations, OS makers have to change the kernels in order to fix this bug. The bug is present in Intel CPUs produced over the last decade and a microcode update will not fix it. First of all, Microsoft, Apple and Linux Distros have to fix it themselves, which will lead to a negative impact on performance.


According to the guys at The Register, this chip-level security flaw affects Linux, MacOS and Windows. According to Microsoft, the company will introduce the necessary changes in an upcoming patch next Tuesday. However, this patch will slow down your processor quite a bit. Depending to what task you are performing, your CPU might slow down somewhere between 5 and 30 percent. The security flaw is found in Intel x86-64 hardware and it seems that a microcode update from Intel won't be able to fix it.

At this times there isn't informations about the security flaw but we will know more during next weeks. What we know so far is that the bug is present in several Intel CPUs. The bug allows access to the contents of protected kernel memory with normal user processes and applications. In order to fix this, OS makers have to separate the kernel's memory from user processes. This task will require more time when a CPU has to access the kernel.

On the other hand, AMD microarchitecture are not affected by this bug:
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This bug is as a security flaw on Intel powered systems and need to be fixed. With this bug, cyber attackers might exploit other security bugs more easily or they could even read contents of the kernelìs memory (like data, login keys, cached file etc). Intel is already in contact with OS makers and we will know more during next weeks.



Source: The Register