LIVE FROM CES 2018, LAS VEGAS: Intel CEO Brian Krzanich reported during a keynote the company will patch vulnerabilities in the majority of its hardware within the week following the discovery of two major security exploits earlier this month.

Krzanich said updates for 90 per cent of processors and other Intel products released in the last five years will be issued “within a week”, with patches for the remaining products coming by the end of January. He added Intel has “not received any information that these exploits have been used to obtain customer data” and said the company is working to keep it that way.

“The best thing you can do to make sure your data remains safe is to apply any updates from your operating system vendor and system manufacturer as soon as they become available.”

Not a concern
Krzanich wasn’t the only tech executive to address the exploits, known as Spectre and Meltdown, at CES.

During a press briefing, Qualcomm president Cristiano Amon said patches for the exploits were issued as early as December.

“Specifically, when we look at the fixes that are available, particularly when you get to memory mapping, access to memory, I think the mobile ecosystem probably has the benefit. There’s negligible to no performance impacts. So it’s not an area of concern for us and the mobile ecosystem.

Intel and Qualcomm are the latest to address the exploits. Last week, Apple confirmed all Mac and iOS systems were vulnerable, but said Apple Watch was in the clear. The company previously released mitigations in iOS 11.2 to help defend against Meltdown, and followed up this week with an iOS 11.2.2 update for the Safari app to protect users against Spectre.