Intel admits to three security flaws in its chips posing risks of illegal data access

US chipmaker Intel Corp. has said in a statement that three security flaws have been detected in some of its microprocessors that pose risks of illegal data access from computer memory.

The world’s major chipmaker said that the security holes in its chips could allow malware and malicious applications to steal sensitive data such as passwords and encryption keys from a computer’s memory.

The vulnerabilities were detected by researchers in Katholieke Universiteit Leuven of Belgium, University of Michigan, Israel Institute of Technology and the University of Adelaide in South Australia.

"Today, Intel and our industry partners are sharing more details and mitigation information," Intel said.

Intel said that the security bugs act much like Spectre and Meltdown flaws disclosed earlier this year. It revealed that the company’s popular next-generation Xeon processors were among the products hit by these bugs.

Intel reassured that it has been working on fixes for the flaws with aforesaid researchers and other partners, and new updates will be rolled out this year to minimise security risks for its users.

As "bad actors" continuously pursue increasingly sophisticated attacks, "we continue to encourage everyone to take advantage of the latest security protections by keeping your systems up-to-date”, Intel said.

In a separate development today, The Economic Times quoted Gadi Singer, vice-president of general architecture at Intel, as saying that the company plans to release Intel Nervana Neural Network Processors in 2019 to help startups and developers build artificial intelligence (AI) setups using its datasets.

This development is a product of Intel’s AI-focused unit, Artificial Intelligence Products Group, formed in 2017 in a bid to outdo Nvidia and others in the race for grabbing major share of the growing AI market.