Intel confirms that whiskey lake has solutions for specter / meltdown
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In March, Intel CEO (now former CEO) Brian Krzanich announced that the company would start shipping processors with solutions for Specter directly into silicon later this year, an exploit that has been quite a headache for the company. These solutions come with the new Whiskey Lake laptop processors.
Intel Core Whiskey Lake offer solutions for Specter and Meltdown on silicon
Now, Intel has confirmed that its new Whiskey Lake series processors will bring those silicon solutions to the consumer market for the first time for Specter and Meltdown exploits, addressing variant 3 , Meltdown , and variant 5 , in addition to the recent L1. Termination Fault . Unfortunately, these fixes will not mitigate all forms of speculative execution attacks, but it is nevertheless a positive step for Intel.
The downside to current Specter patches is their performance impact, with the latest hardware-based fixes Intel promises to reduce the ill effects of its side channel solutions. Unfortunately, Intel has not commented on how much these performance losses have been reduced.
It is expected that it will take several years for Intel and its competitors to break free from the shadow of Specter, especially given the number of new side channel (or secondary channel) vulnerabilities that have been discovered in recent months.
Intel plans to add additional side channel mitigations to its future processor designs, further enhancing its resistance to attacks similar to those of Specter. Upcoming Intel Cascade Lake server processors currently feature Specter mitigations that Whiskey Lake lacks, containing some silicon fixes for Specter Variant 2, though these solutions still need to be combined with OS-level fixes.
In total 6 Whiskey Lake processors were launched; Y series: M3-8100Y, i5-8200Y, i7-8500Y, U series: i3-8145U, i5-8265U, i7-8565U.
Overclock3D fontIntel released coffee lake knowing it is vulnerable to specter and meltdown
Intel was fully aware of the vulnerabilities in its Coffee Lake processors at the time it was released.
Intel has already been sued for the meltdown and specter vulnerabilities
Intel has already been the subject of three lawsuits in the United States for the Specter and Meltdown vulnerabilities that affect all its processors.
Intel already has the new firmware for specter and meltdown
Intel has announced a new version of Specter and Meltdown mitigating firmware for 6th, 7th and 8th generation processors.
