Intel's Spectre patch is so busted, the company is telling customers not to use it

Remember Spectre and Meltdown?

The two recently disclosed vulnerabilities affecting all kinds of computer processors represented a huge threat to consumers and businesses around the globe. Thankfully, Intel offered up a partial fix — so all good, right?

Well, not exactly. You see, it turns out the patch that was issued by Intel has a few problems of its own. Now, things are so busted that the company is telling some of its customers to avoid the official patch altogether.

This unfortunate development came to light Monday, when Intel issued an official statement telling a groups of its customers to just slow their roll when it comes to updating their critically vulnerable systems.

"We recommend that OEMs, cloud service providers, system manufacturers, software vendors and end users stop deployment of current [patch] versions," reads the statement, "as they may introduce higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behavior."

So, it seems that after applying Intel firmware updates to systems running Intel Broadwell and Haswell CPUs, those same systems began suffering from unexpected reboots.

The company published a full list of Intel-based platforms that are impacted by this problem, and it's quite long.

While this definitely doesn't bode well for the company, Intel promises it's working on it.

"I apologize for any disruption this change in guidance may cause," notes Intel Executive Vice President Navin Shenoy. "The security of our products is critical for Intel, our customers and partners, and for me, personally. I assure you we are working around the clock to ensure we are addressing these issues."

And, hopefully, those left out in the cold by Intel should soon (Intel promises!) have a fix coming their way. Intel says it has "made good progress in developing a solution," so, assuming its forthcoming patch isn't also busted in some as-of-yet undetermined way, this mess may soon be in the rearview mirror.

Even so, it's not really a good look for the purported cure to cause additional ailments. But hey, maybe this stumble will distract people from the fact that Intel CEO Brian Krzanich sold $39 million in company stock and options after Intel learned about the vulnerability but before it was disclosed to the public. Maybe. But like the busted Intel patch rebooting customers' systems, it's probably best not to count on it.