Intel’s microprocessors are susceptible to hacking, the company admitted in a recent press release. This is an serious security breach especially since the company’s microprocessors are utilized in almost every corporate network and can be regarded as the building block of the internet.
The vulnerability is not a design or testing flaw, rather, it is the unintended consequences of the design of modern microprocessors.All modern microprocessors were built to guess what functions they will be asked to run next, hence enabling them to run operations faster and more effectively. Unfortunately, this predictive capacity also provides the processors access to data that’s normally protected. If malicious code were to find a way to breach the microprocessor security, it will be able to access any kind of information on the computer or the network.
Intel stresses that this vulnerability is present in all modern chips. Though this risk has no potential to corrupt, modify or delete data, it requires the entire processor industry to find a solution to this problem. With computers becoming even more intelligent, we can no longer rely on the good intentions of internet users. Real computer security has to be made available to all consumers in order to ensure that artificial intelligence, the future of computers and the internet, will not be misused.
[contentcards url=”https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-03/intel-says-research-showed-design-element-created-vulnerability”]