- Intel points out that by now there are Microcode updates for every processor that was released in the past five years.
- The close cooperation with providers of antivirus programs to ensure a compatibility was also mentioned.
They announced that the hardware design of their newest processors has been changed to protect them against Spectre Variant 2 and Meltdown. There is still no solution for the Variant 1 of Spectre. According to Intel these improvements create barriers through extra security walls – on one hand between running applications and on the other hand between processors with different access rights.
The first processors that will have this hardware shield – Intel talks about, inter alia, the eighth Core-I generation – will be published in the second half of 2018, said Krzanich. It’s still not sure which processor series is actually meant with this, because the “Ice Lake” processors were initially planned as the ninth generation. Perhaps there will be sort of an “in-between” generation which is called “Whiskey Lake”.
##See our first article about Spectre and Meltdown