Chip security flaw was reported by Intel to Chinese companies

Intel has been facing a lot of flak due to the security flaws which have been popping out for quite sometime now. The backlash has also been a result of the company not informing people about the Spectre and Meltdown patches. But according to a recent report by The Wall Street Journal, the company seems to have not disclosed this information to the US government.

The report also went on to state that the company had notified selected customers of the security flaws, which included a few Chinese companies, but not the US government.

An Intel spokesperson also commented on the latest allegation and said that not informing the government was unintentional. Although they had told a few customers about it but the news made its way out too soon.

Brian Krzanich , CEO of Intel also recently commented on the result of the fourth quarter, which was severely affected due to the flaws and said, “While we’ve made progress, I am acutely aware that we have more to do. We’ve committed to being transparent, keeping our customers and owners appraised of our progress and, through our actions, building trust. Security is a top priority for Intel, foundational to our products, and it’s critical to the success of our data-centric strategy. Our near-term focus is on delivering high-quality mitigations to protect our customers’ infrastructure on these exploits. We’re working to incorporate silicon-based changes to future products that will directly address the Spectre and Meltdown threats in hardware, and those products will begin appearing later this year. However, these circumstances are highly dynamic, and we updated our risk factors to reflect both the evolving nature of these specific threats and mitigations as well as the security challenges more broadly.”

Intel is currently in a very tricky situation as it is still managing to keep the damage regulated and retain maximum customers.