Many of our readers will have heard of design flaws in most of the computer central processing units that have been sold into the market for a number of years. We bring you below, one of the first responses from the print industry which is from Konica Minolta. – Editor
16 January 2018. A hardware security flaw that affects processors manufactured by Intel, AMD, ARM and POWER was reported last week. This vulnerability, if exploited, would be executed through malware infections and could gather sensitive data such as passwords and encryption keys from computing devices.
Risk mitigation
While this security flaw is of great concern, the immediate risk of attack is very low. Additionally, processor manufacturers state that this exploit is read-only and cannot corrupt, modify, or delete data. All manufacturers are working with vendors quickly to publish patches to address this issue.
Microsoft
• Today Microsoft is issuing a rare out-of-band security update to supported versions of Windows. These include Windows 10 and Server 2016. Older software will be automatically updated starting next Tuesday during Microsoft Patch Tuesday. The Microsoft patch will address processors by Intel, AMD and ARM manufacturers.
Deployment mechanism*
• Windows 10 Systems and Server 2016 will be automatically updated today, once released by Microsoft.
• Windows 7 or 8 and prior Server versions will be updated during your next regular patching window, starting as early as next Tuesday.
* There are some reports that patching may affect system performance; however, this has not been validated at this time and we will monitor this closely.
Further recommendations Konica Minolta recommends that you schedule a comprehensive review of All Covered’s security protection solutions. All Covered’s Secure & Protect Security Suite includes various layers of security software, monitoring and End User Awareness Training to ensure organizations have a sound security practice.
