A significant vulnerability has been discovered in all Intel processor chips and it’s going to have a huge impact going forward. The Register first noticed this major design flaw in Linux kernel patch notes. All operating systems will have to be updated (Linux distributions, Windows, macOS…).
And the worst part is that this patch is going to affect your computer performance. Based on a few benchmarks, The Register thinks computers running Intel chips are going to be slower by 5 to 30 percent.
So what happened exactly? This vulnerability is quite nasty because it’s a widespread hardware bug. Updating your computer can’t make the problem disappear altogether. That’s why operating system vendors are currently redesigning some of the core functionalities of your computer as a workaround.
The bug allows normal user programs to access the protected memory in the kernel. A kernel is the core of an operating system. It’s a process that handles the most sensitive tasks in your system.
