Intel Asking Customers To Stop Using The Original Spectre Patch

Intel recently announced that they have issued patches for 90% of chips affected by the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities, but in case you did not hear, the original patch for the Spectre vulnerability came with issues of its own, so much so that Intel is now asking users to stop using the original patch and use the new one instead.

In a post on its website, Intel writes that they have identified the root cause and has started rolling out a new patch to their partners. “We recommend that OEMs, cloud service providers, system manufacturers, software vendors and end users stop deployment of current versions, as they may introduce higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behavior.”

For those unfamiliar with what the issue is, basically it seems that after applying the original Spectre patch, users were reporting that they were experiencing random reboots. While this is of course better than having a compromised system, clearly random reboots do no one any good.

That being said, it should be noted that these patches have yet to make their way towards end users. Intel has distributed them to their partners which means that they’re currently being tested before their final release, which given that the original patch came with reboot issues, it is a good thing that they caught it before it was distributed.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Computers
Tags: Intel, Security