In an update, Intel has revealed that it won’t be developing patches for the second variant of Spectre for some of its older chips due to, but not limited to, them being impractical to develop.
In an update to its mitigation guide, Intel has revealed that it won’t be patching the second variant of Spectre for certain families of its processors that are affected by Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities.
Intel says that this decision comes due to at least one of the three reasons: it was impractical to create an update due to micro-architectural characteristics, the processors are not widely supported, or they were mostly being used in closed systems and therefore less likely to be exploited:
The list of families affected by this decision is as follows:
Intel announced last month that its 8th-generation chips come with built-in mitigation for the vulnerabilities.
While the company has patched most of its widely used families of processors – including its 6th-, 7th-, and 8th-generation chips, the decision to not patch some of its older CPUs – the latest of them appear to be from 2012 – may pose trouble for some of its customers.
via ZDNet
