Microsoft releases an emergency patch to address security issues with Intel processors

It was the news of yesterday and it may be one of the most important news of the year in the technological field, and that we just started it. And it is that the security problem of Intel processors (and beware, AMD and ARM have also been affected) has alerted a large number of companies. A design flaw that has caused the company's shares to fall on the stock market while its CEO sells part of his shares (those necessary to continue occupying the position) and not have a bigger bump.

But leaving aside the economic aspect, the truth is that the situation is serious, the companies affected are innumerable, many of a more than important size. And if we take users into account... the affected computers number in the hundreds of millions. And of course, with such figures it was clear that Microsoft was going to be one of those affected, being also one of those that have made a move before.

And as they say, you have to face problems by looking them in the eye, and that is what they have done from Redmond, because once the ruling came to light, they have reported that already working on an urgent security update for supported versions of Windows.

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The _software_ update to address the design flaw of Intel processors and that will be deployed automatically starting today on all computers with Windows 10 For models running Windows 7 or Windows 8, users will need to check for the update using the Windows Udpdate utility."

All Intel processors from the last ten years may be affected by the problem. AMD micros, on the other hand, seem to be safe according to statements by those responsible.

The question that remains now is if these updates could cause the team's performance to drop, well, as yesterday we could see they are talking about decreases of up to 35% of the total, a quite high figure that will be perceived especially in the older processors and not so much in the most recent ones, such as the case of Intel processors based on Skylake.

And the fact is that the bug is related to the way in which applications can access the content of certain memory areas of the protected kernel and leave the field open to an attacker who would thus avoid the kernel access protection barrier (KASLR or Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization) and allow an application to read the contents of the kernel memory.

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A bug that makes machines need those patches that can cause some systems to run more slowly In fact, Intel claims that the loss of performance will be variable depending on the workload, although it is not clear how it will affect each team."

Not just Intel

And the problem is enormous, since not only Intel is affected. AMD and ARM processors are also affected by said failure, an error that is also aggravated because in these cases researchers have determined that there would be no patch since it would require changing all the architecture. In fact, Google has announced on its official blog that Android smartphones are also vulnerable to the security breach. This broadens the battlefield beyond PCs, since tablets, smartphones and any device with an ARM processor would be affected, fully affecting the entire Google, Apple or Microsoft ecosystem to give just three examples.

The news that broke yesterday has only just begun and it remains to be seen which path it takes and the degree of impact on companies and private users , while Intel's situation is tremendously compromised, especially now that a new front has opened up in the PC market with the arrival of equipment with Qualcomm ARM processors.

"In Xataka | Intel responds to the accusations: many devices, processors and operating systems are susceptible to these exploits In Xataka | The Intel Processor Problem: Who Does It Affect, Who Doesn&39;t, and How to Fix It"