UPDATED 21:20 EST / FEBRUARY 18 2018

INFRA

Intel now facing 35 lawsuits over Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities

Intel Corp. is now facing 35 lawsuits either directly or indirectly related to the “Meltdown” and “Spectre” critical vulnerabilities in its central processing unit chips.

Disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing by Intel on Friday, the largest number of lawsuits, 30 so far, are customer class action lawsuits that generally represent users who claim to have been harmed by Intel’s actions or omissions in connection to the two vulnerabilities. Two of the lawsuits, also seeking class-action status, represent shareholders who claim that the disclosure of the vulnerabilities in statements made by Intel were false or misleading.

The remaining three lawsuits, not getting as much attention in the media, have been filed on behalf of shareholders in a California state court. They allege that Intel executives or directors failed in their duties to shareholders by delaying disclosure of the breach as well as failing to act on insider trading.

The insider trading claims relate to Intel Chief Executive Officer Brian Krzanich selling millions of dollars’ worth of Intel stock after the company was aware of the vulnerabilities but before they had publicly disclosed them. Intel claimed that Krzanich was not aware of the vulnerabilities when he made the sales. Google said it informed the affected companies about the Spectre and Meltdown flaws in June and July, while Krzanich sold his stock in November.

Intel has struggled to provide patches for the vulnerabilities, because both Meltdown and Spectre relate to an issue on the chips themselves, not simply the firmware running on them. An initial patch that started rolling out in December, prior to the public disclosure of the vulnerabilities, was withdrawn Jan. 22 because of side effects from the patch, including a high number of system reboots. Since it was relying on Intel’s fix, Microsoft Corp. was also forced to issue an emergency patch Jan. 29 to disable Intel’s Spectre patch.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

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