Intel confronts a ‘nightmare’ with report of chip flaw

A report that Intel Corp. chips are vulnerable to hackers raised concerns about the company’s main products and brand.

On Tuesday, the technology website The Register said a bug lets some software gain access to parts of a computer’s memory that are set aside to protect things like passwords. All computers with Intel chips from the past 10 years appear to be affected, the report said, and patches to Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s OS X operating systems will be required. The security updates may slow down older machinery by as much as 30 percent, according to The Register.

Flaws in the designs of microprocessors, which go through rigorous testing and verification, are usually easily fixed by patches in the code that they use to communicate with the rest of the computer. But if the error can’t be fixed easily in software, it could be necessary to redesign the chip, which can be extremely costly and time-consuming.

Intel is expected to put out a statement but hadn’t yet commented on the issue Wednesday. Historically, the way companies respond to such issues and how quickly they address them has determined how big the problem becomes.

“This is a potential PR nightmare,” said Dan Ives, head of tech research at GBH Insights. “They need to get ahead of this and try to contain any of the damage to customers as well to the brand.”

The report hit Intel shares, which fell as much as 3.8 percent, the most since April.