Intel’s Chip Flaw Is a Potential Window for Malicious Attackers to Steal Critical Data

The juggernaut of chips, Intel is in troubled water after its massive chip flaw has been made public. The news has hit the company’s credibility and stock market hard. 

Accusations have been flying around saying that Intel CEO Brian Krzanich who sold off $24 million worth of stock and options in the company in last November, knew about the vulnerability.

The reported flaw lets ordinary users and processes to access data deep in the inner architecture of the computer- importantly kernel memory. The huge vulnerability affects processors from Intel, AMD, and ARM and could allow malicious actors to steal passwords and other secret data, became public this week.

The icing on the cake is that tech companies knew about the vulnerability for months, in fact, Google informed Intel about the Chip flaw in the last June.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich sold off a large portion of his stake in the company months after the chip maker was informed by Google of significant security vulnerability in its flagship PC processors - but before the problem was publicly known.

Earlier this week, security researchers took note of a series of changes Linux and Windows developers began rolling out in beta updates to address a critical security flaw: A bug in Intel chips allows low-privilege processes to access memory in the computer's kernel, the machine's most privileged inner sanctum. Theoretical attacks that exploit that bug, based on quirks in shortcuts Intel has implemented for faster processing, could allow malicious software to spy deeply into other processes and data on the target computer or smartphone.