Intel CEO dives straight into Spectre, Meltdown at CES keynote

It was supposed to be about the future, but things haven't exactly been going as planned for chip manufacturer Intel.

On Monday evening, CEO Brian Krzanich took the stage at CES in Las Vegas to deliver a keynote speech billed as a look toward how data will transform our lives. Unfortunately for the executive, Intel is still having trouble escaping its past. That was made perfectly clear the moment he turned his remarks to the two elephant-sized vulnerabilities in the room: Spectre and Meltdown.

The bugs, first publicly disclosed last week, affect almost all modern computer processors to some extent, including Intel chips. Between the two of them, there's a good chance your laptop, desktop, cloud computer, or smartphone are susceptible to hackers looking to steal your data.

Krzanich's answer to consumers seeking direction on what to do? He urged we take the same precautionary measures insisted by practically every other tech company: patch, patch, patch.

And just when will those updates become available for Intel products? For those introduced in the past five years, Krzanich said over 90 percent of them should get an update within a week. He cautioned, however, that some systems might slow down as a result ("workload dependent"), but that Intel would continue working with the industry to minimize those effects.

"The best thing you can do to make sure your data remains safe is to apply any updates [...] as soon as they become available," he noted.

Although numerous companies have issued software patches that mitigate the risk, Spectre, in particular, is expected to haunt us for a long time. That's because, according to the researchers who discovered it, it's harder to protect against.

Krzanich, however, had a bit of a different take: "The collaboration across the industry [...] has been truly remarkable," he told those gathered. "As of now we have not received any information that these exploits have been used to access customer data."

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Notably, this is not the only controversy looming large over Krzanich — there's another one that happens to be of his own making. You see, the CEO sold off $39 million worth of stock after the company was notified of the vulnerabilities present in Intel chips. Crucially, the sale took place in November — well before Spectre and Meltdown were publicly disclosed.

See the potential problem? Yeah, so do we. Intel, for its part, has claimed via a spokesperson that the sale was just a regular part of Krzanich's stock plan.

The truth of that statement, much like Intel's response to the bugs, will likely take some time to flesh out. At least Krzanich was willing to address one of them at this year's CES.