Things started a little rough for Intel this year.
On Monday night, CEO Brian Krzanich took to the stage at CES in Las Vegas to deliver a keynote address about how data will transform our lives. Unfortunately for Intel , it's hard to escape the recent events surrounding its name. That became abundantly clear when the company's CEO turned his attention to the two huge vulnerabilities that surfaced just a few days ago, Spectre and Meltdown.
The bugs, first disclosed last week, affect nearly all modern computer processors, including Intel chips, to some degree. Between the two, there's a good chance your laptop, desktop, cloud computer, or smartphone could be vulnerable to hackers looking to steal your data.
Krzanich's response to consumers looking for a solution on what to do was to take the same preventative measures that almost every tech company has recommended: patch, patch, patch.
And when will these updates be available for Intel products? For those introduced in the last five years, Krzanich said that more than 90 percent of them should be updated within a week. However, he warned that some systems may experience slowdowns, but that Intel will continue to work to minimize those effects.
“The best thing you can do to ensure your data remains secure is to apply any updates […] as soon as they become available,” he noted.
While many companies have issued software updates that mitigate the risk, Spectre, in particular, is expected to haunt us for a long time. That's because, according to the researchers who discovered it, it's harder to protect against.
Krzanich, however, had a slightly different opinion: “The collaboration across the industry […] has been really remarkable,” he told the audience. “So far, we have not received any information that these security vulnerabilities have been used to access customer data.”.
It should be noted, however, that this isn't the only controversy looming large for Krzanich — there's another one of his own making. The CEO sold $39 million worth of stock after the company was informed of vulnerabilities in Intel chips. In fact, the sale took place in November — well before Spectre and Meltdown were even released.
Intel, for its part, claimed through a spokesperson that the sale was simply a routine move of Krzanich's stock program.
The truth of this statement, like Intel's response to the bugs, will probably take some time to fully sink in!
