Intel faces lawsuits over Meltdown and Spectre bugs
Intel is facing at least three class-action lawsuits over software bugs revealed earlier in the same week.
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Plaintiffs were claiming compensation for flaws and the resultant slowdown in their operations that patching computers for the Meltdown and Spectre bugs was expected to cause.
The bugs were present in all modern processors and allowed hackers to access personal details and data.
Intel had already begun to provide software and firmware to protect computers from those flaws, but fix those bugs caused computers to slowdown, although Intel said in a statement that the impact on performance was "workload-dependent" and would not be significant for the average user.
One of the lawyers for the plaintiffs went on record saying: "The security vulnerability revealed by these reports suggests that this may be one of the largest security flaws ever facing the American public."
"It is imperative that Intel act swiftly to fix the problem and ensure consumers are fully compensated for all losses suffered as a result of their actions," he added.
Nonetheless, legal experts said that any consumer would have to prove damages to proceed with claims.
The Meltdown and Spectre flaws were discovered by security researchers at Google’s Project Zero, who also found that they could affect virtually every modern computer, smartphone and tablet regardless of the operating system they were running on.
"Meltdown is probably one of the worst CPU bugs ever found," said Daniel Gruss, one of the researchers who discovered the vulnerability.
Brian Krzanich, Intel CEO, sold half of his company’s shares in November, months after Google informed them that they had a serious security problem in their processors. He sold them for approximately 24m dollars.
According to some observers, if it was confirmed that Intel was already aware of the problem when Krzanich sold his shares, it would put him against the ropes and possibly result in an official inquiry.
However, the company had been quick to point out that the sale had nothing to do with the bug and that it was a "part of a plan of standard sales of stock."