Security flaws put all phones, PCs at risk
FRANKFURT/SAN FRANCISCO: Security researchers have found a set of security flaws that they said could let hackers steal sensitive information from nearly every modern computing device containing chips from Intel Corp, Advanced Micro Devices Inc and ARM Holdings.
One of the bugs is specific to Intel but another affects laptops, desktop computers, smartphones, tablets and Internet servers alike.
Intel and ARM insisted that the issue was not a design flaw, but it will require users to download a patch and update their operating system to fix.
“Phones, PCs, everything are going to have some impact, but it’ll vary from product to product,” Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said in an interview with CNBC.
Researchers with Alphabet Inc’s Google Project Zero, in conjunction with academic and industry researchers from several discovered two flaws.
The first, called Meltdown, affects Intel chips and lets hackers bypass the hardware barrier between applications run by users and the computer’s memory, potentially letting hackers read a computer’s memory and steal passwords.
The second, called Spectre, affects chips from Intel, AMD and ARM and lets hackers potentially trick countries, otherwise error-free applications into giving up secret information.
The researchers said on their website that Intel paid a so-called “bug bounty” to them for disclosing the flaws to Intel but did not state a dollar amount.
The researchers said Apple Inc and Microsoft Corp had patches ready for desktop computers affected by Meltdown.