The critical design flaw discovered in the way Intel CPUs process information has reportedly already been fixed by Apple in a recent release of macOS.
Apple’s fix came out at the beginning of December with the release of macOS 10.13.2. But according to one developer, the company has a few additional patches for Intel’s blunder in a current beta build.
The flaw can be found in all Intel chips made in the last 10 years. It allows desktop programs to read parts of a computer’s protected kernel memory. This potentially gives malicious apps and attackers access to passwords, login info and other personal information.
Fixing Intel’s flaw
Developer Alex Ionescu posted on Twitter that Apple included a fix for the flaw in macOS 10.13.2. Another report from AppleInsider echoes Ionescu’s claim, citing other sources that say most of the damage has already been mitigated.
The question on everyone's minds: Does MacOS fix the Intel #KPTI Issue? Why yes, yes it does. Say hello to the "Double Map" since 10.13.2 — and with some surprises in 10.13.3 (under Developer NDA so can't talk/show you). cc @i0n1c @s1guza @patrickwardle pic.twitter.com/S1YJ9tMS63
— Alex Ionescu (@aionescu) January 3, 2018
Intel issued a statement today saying that the exploits aren’t limited to Intel chips — lots of other manufacturers’ silicon suffers from the same issue.
“Recent reports that these exploits are caused by a ‘bug’ or a ‘flaw’ and are unique to Intel products are incorrect. Based on the analysis to date, many types of computing devices — with many different vendors’ processors and operating systems — are susceptible to these exploits.”
Some early reports estimated that fixing the flaw will cause Windows and Linux machines to see performance slowdowns of up to 30 percent. Intel says the performance impact shouldn’t be major, though.
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
8 responses to “Apple already fixed Intel’s massive chip flaw in macOS update”
OK, so how difficult is it for somebody to actually exploit the flaw anyway? It sounds like they would either have to get you to run their program somehow, or have physical access to and be logged into your computer.
According to a few articles I’ve read, It’s very hard for anyone to actually exploit this flaw and no actual exploit even exists yet.
According to another article, there is proof of concept code and it can be exploitable via javascript
With a ton of prerequsites. The 4-5 lines of JavaScript are NOT all that’s needed.
Thanks all for the answers!
Is apple going to update El Capitan and Sierra which are still supported?
Great excuse to force an upgrade
No and you shouldn’t worry about it. This is a marketing move to share manipulate by Intel, not a really threatening bug. This is why the first time the word ‘exploit’ is used in the article it’s when in reference to others having the problem. Flaw sounds so much better.
There are many, MANY bugs that exist in OS X bigger and easier to exploit that are ignored because they are hard to make into ‘a weapon’ or virus. Meltdown is big, but isn’t useful because it needs to be in an App (cannot be executed by browser code) and SIP/Gatekeeper will quite quickly blacklist any apps containing kernel code that runs entirely in userspace. It’s called Heuristics and is old as antivirus themselves. This is something provided in all OS since Vista and 10.7 I think, and is why AV is not a requirement anymore on less secure OS’s we all know of.
In essence Meltdown’s a bug that can be mitigated already by existing macOS protections like Gatekeeper if it ever shows in the wild. What came out in 10.13.2 is OS level code that means that zero day attacks won’t work, with the associated slowdown talked about on other sites.
A zero day attack is a virus that nobody’s seen before: An outbreak on the day it’s released or a government agency tool that is ignored by antivirus/system protections/password protections like forensics apps would be. Meltdown could well be an old backdoor being closed due to rising AMD use.
As said it is damn near impossible to weaponise but has many times the media reach because Intel want to deflate their shares over the next few months. They ‘picked a fight with ARM and AMD’ over whether the bug ‘they just found the day after the CEO sells 400k shares that he put the sell order down for 2 years ago” was affecting them. You shouldn’t worry about it at all.