A total of eight issues were identified by researchers

May 3, 2018 12:32 GMT  ·  By

A new set of Spectre-like vulnerabilities have been identified for Intel processors, and the company is already working on patches.

The last few months have marked the discovery of an unending stream of vulnerabilities for pretty much all of the major processor manufacturers, although it looks like Intel has been in the forefront, taking all of the hits.

While it’s certainly bad for the company that these sort of problems seem to be cropping out all the time, it’s also good for the end-users. It usually means that people will get better security from their hardware, and that’s always a plus.

How bad is it?

Not all vulnerabilities are the same, and some are more dangerous than others. The German researchers from c't / Heise have found eight of these bugs, and Intel is already aware of them. From the looks of it, four of those vulnerabilities are considered high-level risk and have been prioritized.

As you can imagine, until all of these problems are patched, there are no details exactly how they work, but the researchers have surmised that they are very similar to Spectre. That the reason why they are called Spectre Next Generation or Spectre NG.

The researchers have also indicated that some ARM processors could be exposed, but for now, very little information has been made public. According to a report on Guru3D, the patches for these vulnerabilities will be released on two waves, the first one being in May.

On the other hand, unlike Spectre and Meltdown which affected multiple CPU manufacturers, the current problems are confined to Intel and possible ARM. It remains to be seen if AMD will join or if they are safe for now.

It’s also a good bet that some of the patches released by Intel will be integrated into motherboard BIOSes, although that’s not a certainty.