Did Intel leave a huge security hole in your brand new PC?

By Darren Allan

There’s a huge and extremely worrying range of flaws in newer Intel processors which could allow hackers to take full control over the relevant machines – with millions of PCs potentially affected.

After a severe exploit was uncovered by Mark Ermolov and Maxim Goryachy, Moscow-based security experts who work for Positive Technologies Research, Intel has admitted that some 10 vulnerabilities exist in the Intel Management Engine, Trusted Execution Engine and Server Platform Services.

As mentioned, these flaws can be leveraged to remotely execute commands, take control of machines and pilfer precious data, and they affect all of Intel’s Core series of processors from Skylake (6th-generation) onwards, including the firm’s latest 8th-gen CPUs.

Many Xeon as well as Atom, Pentium and Celeron processors are also hit by these gremlins. Intel lists the full details of chips which are affected here, and also offers a detection tool to check whether your system is subject to these gaping holes (although note that the utility is designed for businesses, not consumer users).

As Ars Technica reports, the majority of the vulnerabilities (six of them) affect the Intel Management Engine, an independent subsystem on the firm’s processors which Intel says is designed for …read more

Source:: techradar.com – Computing Components