Intel has made public its financial earnings for Q4 2017 this week. During earnings call, CEO Brian Krzanich spoke about the ongoing concern regarding Spectre and Meltdown and how Intel is planning to fix the exploit for good.
If you are unaware of the problem, it was discovered late last year that vulnerabilities exist in chip design that can allow hackers to read sensitive data from kernel, these vulnerabilities were categorically named “Spectre” and “Meltdown”. It was dire news for every chip maker including ARM and AMD, but Meltdown proved to be a case that was mostly exclusive to Intel. Even though Intel has released patches to fix the vulnerability, a silicon-level fix is needed to close the gates.
“Security is a top priority for Intel, foundational to our products, and it’s critical to the success of our data-centric strategy. Our near-term focus is on delivering high quality mitigations to protect our customers’ infrastructure from these exploits. We’re working to incorporate silicon-based changed to future products that will directly address the Spectre and Meltdown threats in hardware. And those products will begin appearing later this year.”, Krzanich announced.
While Intel has promised a positive future outlook on the matter, existing processors will continue to remain vulnerable. Intel has warned investors that fixes released earlier may not resolve the problem.
“Security vulnerability issues may exist with respect to our processors and other products as well as the operating systems and workloads running on them. Mitigation techniques, including software and firmware updates, may not operate as intended or effectively resolve these vulnerabilities.”. Even more so, Intel is preparing investors for the possibility of continued exposure to bad publicity in light of the existence of these vulnerabilities in existing processors.
“We have and may continue to face product claims, litigation, and adverse publicity and customer relations from security vulnerabilities and/or mitigation techniques, including as a result of side-channel exploits such as “Spectre” and “Meltdown,” which could adversely impact our results of operations, customer relationships, and reputation.”
Despite all of the negative press Intel has received or may continue to receive, the company has posted its highest profitable quarter yet; a 4 percent increase from the same period in 2016. The company enjoyed a year revenue of $62.8 billion; a 6 percent increase over its previous year.
