Intel releasing new patches for Meltdown and Spectre

[prehistoric]

Some Intel machines experienced an increased frequency of unintended reboots after the previous patch. Now, Intel says it understands the cause, and will release new patches shortly. They do not recommend applying the previous patches.

[rufwoof]

Thanks Prehistoric.

Considering that the vulnerability exploit potential is pretty limited (reading some memory space if you can hack your way in), seems like fixes that have bricked some systems and other problems have been a much greater risk.

[prehistoric]

We aren't done with the problem by a long shot. As Linus noted, in his inimitable style, their explanation of what they were doing, and trying to sell fixes as added optional security features, was f*ing insane.
Microsoft is now undoing the damage Intel did to Windows systems with the earlier patches.

Spectre is a whole nuther can of worms. It applies to just about every machine that runs 64-bit x86 code and has speculative execution. The problem with having processes that run untrusted code isn't just a problem for cloud providers, it also impacts people who run browsers that run untested code off the Internet. What we have done so far are mitigations, not a real fix.

Predictably, Intel will use this to sell new processors, and Microsoft will use this to force people to upgrade to W10, where built-in telemetry will boost M$ cashflow from selling information for targeted advertising. If customers had any rights prior to this, these will disappear in new licensing and terms of service.

There are much wider implications to consider.