After tech firms rushed to fix security flaws in chips that hackers can exploit, reports surfaced that Intel CEO Brian Krzanich sold off $24 million worth of stock and options last year after the chip-maker became aware of security bugs.
According to a Sky News report late on Thursday, Intel was notified by Google in June last year of a flaw in its processor chips. "Regulatory filings showed Krzanich pocketed about $25 million before tax from the sale of stocks and options in late November," the report added.
Intel, however, said Krzanich's sale had nothing to do with chip vulnerability.
"Brian's sale is unrelated. He continues to hold shares in-line with corporate guidelines," the report said, citing an Intel statement.
The two security flaws, dubbed as "Spectre" and "Meltdown", reported by Google "Project Zero" and British tech website the Register, is not unique to Intel chips and also affect AMD and ARM processors.
In its latest statement, Intel said on Friday that it is rapidly issuing updates for all types of Intel-based computer systems -- including personal computers and servers -- that render those systems immune from both exploits.
"Intel has already issued updates for the majority of processor products introduced within the past five years. By the end of next week, Intel expects to have issued updates for more than 90 percent of processor products introduced within the past five years," the company said.
"Intel continues to believe that the performance impact of these updates is highly workload-dependent and, for the average computer user, should not be significant and will be mitigated over time," the company said.
Meanwhile, Apple broke the silence, admitting that all Mac systems and iOS devices were affected but are safe at the moment.
"These issues apply to all modern processors and affect nearly all computing devices and operating systems. All Mac systems and iOS devices are affected but there are no known exploits impacting customers at this time," Apple said in a blog post late on Thursday.
"Since exploiting many of these issues requires a malicious app to be loaded on your Mac or iOS device, we recommend downloading software only from trusted sources such as the App Store," the company added.
"Meltdown" and "Spectre" issues take advantage of a modern CPU performance feature called "speculative execution".
"Speculative execution" improves speed by operating on multiple instructions at once - possibly in a different order than when they entered the CPU.
"Meltdown" and "Spectre" exploitation techniques abuse "speculative execution" to access privileged memory - including that of the kernel - from a less-privileged user process such as a malicious app running on a device, Apple said.
To safeguard its customers from potential security bugs in chips, Google also deployed a novel chip-level patch across its entire infrastructure, resulting in only minor declines in performance in most cases.
"We developed a novel mitigation called 'Retpoline' -- a binary modification technique that protects against 'branch target injection' attacks," Matt Linton, Senior Security Engineer and Pat Parseghian, Technical Programme Manager at Google, wrote in a joint blog post.
"We shared 'Retpoline' with our industry partners and have deployed it on Google's systems, where we have observed negligible impact on performance," the engineers added.
Software major Microsoft has already issued emergency updates to supported versions of Windows. Amazon was also reportedly working on security updates to their Cloud services and other products.
Bitcoin scam case: ED attaches assets worth over Rs 97 cr of Raj Kundra, Shilpa Shetty
The attached properties include a residential flat in Juhu, which is in the name of Shilpa Shetty, another residential bungalow in Pune and equity shares in Raj Kundra's name.
Google sacks 28 employees involved in protests over Israel govt contract
Tech giant Google has laid off 28 employees who were involved in sit-in protests at its offices over a Google contract with the Israeli government.
Firing at Salman Khan's home: Mumbai Police nab 2 shooters from Gujarat's Bhuj
In a major breakthrough, the Mumbai Police have arrested two persons allegedly involved in the firing incident outside the residence of Bollywood actor Salman Khan from Gujarat, early on Tuesday, official sources said.
'First and last warning': Bishnoi gang claims responsibility for firing at Salman Khan's home
Based in the US, Anmol Bishnoi, the brother of Lawrence Bishnoi, has also described the incident as the "first and last warning" for Salman Khan, ominously decreeing that the next time "the bullets won’t be fired at walls or an empty home", indicating the actor would be directly targetted.
Salman Khan again targeted; crime branch probes firing at actor’s Mumbai home
With Bollywood megastar Salman Khan again targeted, the Mumbai Police Crime Branch entered the scene to probe at least three-four bullets fired at the actor’s Bandra West home early this morning, officials said on Sunday.
MVA cracks seat-share formula, Uddhav Thackeray grabs maximum
The Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance has finally sealed its long-drawn seat-sharing deal ‘amicably’ for the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra, top leaders said here on Tuesday.
Indian American selected among 12 NASA astronaut candidates
He continued on to earn a master's degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduated from the US Naval Test Pilot School.
World's oldest human species' fossils found in Morocco
The institute said the remains of the Homo sapiens, which were found in a remote village called Jbel Irhoud, date back to over 300,000 years ago, Xinhua reported.