Spectre and Meltdown strike on its processors. While the Spectre puzzle is a near-universal problem faced by modern processors, the Meltdown attack is limited to processors from Intel and Apple, along with several ARM designs that are getting to market shortly.
Per Intel’s filing, 30 of the trails are proposed consumer class-action suits from users challenging to be harmed by the flaws. While Meltdown has practical workarounds, they begin with some performance cost. Workarounds for Spectre are more challenging and thus can harm system performance.
The other two events are securities lawsuits that claim that Intel made misleading public comments during the six-month period after the organization was notified of the obstacles but before the attacks were made public.
Additionally, three further shareholder lawsuits were filed, alleging that Intel’s board and corporate officers committed a breach of duty in connection to the exposure of the security flaws and failed to act in connection to alleged insider trading. In November last year, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich sold all the Intel stock he was permitted to sell. This stock sale has prompted speculation about insider trading, though Intel maintains that Krzanich’s actions were unrelated to the security issues.
The company’s filing writes that further lawsuits around these issues are likely and that due to the early scene of these suits, there’s no estimate of what losses, if any, may arise as a consequence.
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