Intel wants to release all Meltdown and Specter patches before the end of January

Intel announced at CES that it plans to release all of its Meltdown and Specter patches for CPUs up to five years old before the end of this month. As the chip manufacturer had previously announced, 90 percent of those processors will receive patches this week.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich added that the impact of the patches “depends very much on the workload to be run,” Engadget writes in response to the presentation. He was referring to the performance degradation that can occur due to the patches. He further advised people to continue patching operating systems and system manufacturers and reiterated the position that Intel is not aware of any exploitation of the related vulnerabilities.

Following the announcement of Meltdown and Specter, many parties have released updates. Apple released additional patches Monday in the form of iOS 11.2.2, an additional update to macOS 10.13.2 and Safari 11.0.2 for the Sierra and El Capitan versions of its desktop operating system.

Following the patches from Microsoft, several users of older AMD processors reported over the weekend that the updates caused their systems to stop booting. Microsoft is now aware of the issues and has provided update pages with information, such as KB4056894 and KB4056892. The company has put updates to problematic AMD systems on hold.