Intel Won't Include a Hardware Based Antivirus in Its Chips Says McAfee CEO

At the start of the year reports suggested that Intel is working on developing a hardware based antivirus that would come embedded in some of their products, but now McAfee's CEO David DeWalt has dismissed these claims as it stated that Intel won't add antiviral programs to its silicon.

The company representative didn't however deny the fact that Intel will add some unique security technologies to its products, but these will only allow for better integration between software and hardware.

“We are not embedding anything into the silicon. What we are doing is utilizing features that exist today with the technologies McAfee has to secure the stack in a way that has never been done before,” said David DeWalt, chief executive officer of McAfee in an interview quoted by the Xbit Labs publication.

“What people do not realize is Intel has already innovated security capabilities into the hardware. That’s already shipping. Intel has antitheft built into their technologies today," concluded McAfee's CEO.

DeWalt continued to talk about the threats encountered by today's computing systems and went on to state that the creation of a root of trust at a much lower level of the IT stack could help protect these machines a lot better.

This could probably mean that Intel is working on developing such a root of trust, but noting is certain at this point.

At the end of January, an Intel representative hinted at the inclusion of a hardware-based antivirus solution inside the company's products.

This would be used for defending the system against zero-day attacks and also for increasing the speed of the detection process.

These reports were also fueled by the fact that at the end of last year Intel has finished purchasing security experts McAfee, which specialize in the development of antivirus programs.