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MICROSOFT RELEASES EMERGENCY PATCH AFTER INTEL ROLLS ITS LATEST ONE BACK.

- [ DAN GARDINER ]

IN JANUARY, THE discovery of serious flaws in the design processors used in millions of devices around the world had both chip-manufactur­ers and software-makers scrambling to release patches to counter the threats. Although Intel released updates and promised that all its devices would see fixes rolled out by the end January, the company’s most recent patch for Spectre embarrassi­ngly had to be rolled back because of reboot issues. “I apologise for any disruption this change in guidance may cause,” said Neil Shenoy, Intel’s Executive Vice President, in a statement.

Soon after Intel’s public withdrawal of the patch, Microsoft released its own stop-gap update for Windows, which is designed to mitigate Spectre bugs until Intel comes up with a fix that works.

Meanwhile, security firms are reporting that there are already hundreds of pieces of nonfunctio­nal Spectre and Meltdown malware circulatin­g, which seem to be probing the exploits — test runs, it’s likely, to be followed by more serious and ‘armed’ malware that could do real damage. Get your gear patched wherever possible, reader.

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