VARIANT 3A AND 4: TWO NEW FLAWS IN INTEL PROCESSORS

Two new security vulnerabilities, Variant 3a and Variant 4, have been discovered and concern the Intel, AMD and ARM processors marketed for 10 years. Fixes will be offered, but they can slow down computers by 8%.

THE FLAWS COME AFTER MELTDOWN AND SPECTRUM

The Meltdown and Specter vulnerabilities discovered at the beginning of the year seem to be just the beginning of a long series of weaknesses in the current processors. This subject had already been much in the news in the first quarter, but now Intel reveals the presence of two additional security flaws: Variant 3a and Variant 4. In reality, there are already 8 other flaws discovered and others should extend this list in the coming weeks ...

The fact is that manufacturers are developing updates as they are discovered, but the problem is that the update itself is likely to slow down the overall operation of the system. computer. Although considered minor in terms of impact on the machine, these two new flaws remain plagues for computer scientists, since they are an integral part of the architecture of the processors themselves. Major brands are not currently considering completely rethinking the processors concerned, the solution based on updates and injections patches seem unavoidable.

PATCH FIXES THAT SLOW DOWN THE COMPUTER

As already discussed at the beginning of the year at the time of their discovery, Meltdown and Specter touch all the processors out of factories since the last ten years, as well as almost all. The exact list has nevertheless been published on the official website of Intel, about fifty models of processors. Many chips Intel, AMD and ARM are concerned. As the tests have determined, these two new flaws represent little danger to the targeted computers, but the patches will still be offered to users. It should be noted that these patches, which compensate for a failure of the architecture of the processors, will result in a loss of speed of the machine of the order of 2 to 8%. As a result, these updates will not be mandatory, but only subject to the approval of each user.