VentureBeat: Quantum progress: How IBM, Microsoft, Google and Intel compare. “Established enterprise leaders like IBM, Microsoft and Google continue to make progress in quantum computing. As a result, quantum computers are getting bigger and achieving advantages over traditional tech in limited circumstances.”
Bleeping Computer: Conti ransomware targeted Intel firmware for stealthy attacks. “Researchers analyzing the leaked chats of the notorious Conti ransomware operation have discovered that teams inside the Russian cybercrime group were actively developing firmware hacks. According to messages exchanged between members of the cybercrime syndicate, Conti developers had created proof-of-concept (PoC) code that leveraged Intel’s Management Engine (ME) to overwrite flash and gain SMM (System Management Mode) execution.”
The Register: Russia cobbles together supercomputing platform to wean off foreign suppliers. “Russia is adapting to a world where it no longer has access to many technologies abroad with the development of a new supercomputer platform that can use foreign x86 processors such as Intel’s in combination with the country’s homegrown Elbrus processors.”
Bleeping Computer: Intel shuts down all business operations in Russia. “US chipmaker Intel announced Tuesday night that it had suspended all business operations in Russia, joining tech other companies who pulled out of the country due to the invasion of Ukraine. Intel had already suspended all shipments to customers in Russia and Belarus last month after the US government issued sweeping sanctions that prevented the export of technology to the countries.”
The Verge: Intel will put unvaccinated employees on unpaid leave. “Intel has reportedly notified employees that anyone who remains unvaccinated will need to get the COVID-19 vaccine or submit an exemption by January 4th. Otherwise, they face being put on unpaid leave, according to The Associated Press and The Oregonian.”
CNET: CES 2022: Google latest to drop out over COVID-19, joining Intel, T-Mobile and more. “CES 2022 on Thursday lost Google, the latest company to confirm the cancellation of its in-person plans to be in Las Vegas for the tech trade show and to shift to a virtual presence. The search company and its sister company Waymo join T-Mobile, Intel, Lenovo, TikTok, Meta and many others making such a change over concerns about the uptick in coronavirus cases and the omicron variant.”
KnowTechie: Intel says the infrastructure the metaverse requires isn’t available to support it. “According to Intel, who makes many of the computer chips that power these internet-accessing devices we take for granted on a daily basis, the metaverse is going to require a shit-ton of computational power — at least 1,000 times what we’re capable of today as it pertains to efficiency.”
CNET: Intel expands AI career education program to 18 community colleges. “The AI for Workforce Program offers students courses on data collection, computer vision, AI model training, coding, the societal impacts and ethics of AI technology. Students who complete the program will be awarded a certificate or associate degree in artificial intelligence.”
Neowin: Microsoft, Intel, BBC and others form coalition to combat misinformation. “Misinformation and online content fraud has been rampant in the past few years with increased accessibility to technology. To combat this growing epidemic, various entities from the technology and media industry have joined forces to form the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA). Its members include Microsoft, Adobe, Arm, Intel, BBC, and Truepic.”
Mozilla Blog: New Bytecode Alliance Brings the Security, Ubiquity, and Interoperability of the Web to the World of Pervasive Computing. “The Bytecode Alliance is a newly-formed open source community dedicated to creating new software foundations, building on standards such as WebAssembly and WebAssembly System Interface (WASI). Mozilla, Fastly, Intel, and Red Hat are founding members.”
The Register: Intel, Microsoft, Adobe release a swarm of bug fixes to ruin your week. “IT admins face a busy week ahead as Microsoft, Intel, and Adobe have issued bundles of scheduled security fixes addressing more than 150 CVE-listed vulnerabilities.”
ZDNet: Meltdown-Spectre flaws: We’ve found new attack variants, say researchers. “Researchers have developed a tool to uncover new ways of attacking the Meltdown and Spectre CPU side-channel flaws, which may force chipmakers like Intel to re-examine already difficult hardware mitigations.”
Boing Boing: 139 pieces of (seemingly nonfunctional) malware that exploit Spectre and Meltdown are now circulating in the wild. “This week, AV-TEST’s census of samples of circulating malware that attempt to exploit the Meltdown and Spectre bugs hit 139, up from 77 on January 17. AV-TEST CEO Andreas Marx says that the different strains of malware mostly contain recompiled versions of the same proof-of-concept code released with the initial report on the bugs.”
BetaNews: Microsoft issues emergency Windows update to disable Intel’s shoddy Spectre variant 2 mitigation . “The computer industry is in utter chaos right now. Despite a slight increase in PC sales for Q4 2018, the market is still extremely unhealthy. Not to mention, pretty much all existing hardware is fundamentally flawed thanks to both Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. At least major companies such as Intel, AMD, and Microsoft are working together to mitigate these risks, right? Wrong. These patches have proven to be problematic — for instance, some AMD computers were rendered unbootable. Ugh, what a failure.”
BetaNews: Intel tells customers to stop installing Meltdown/Spectre patches due to ‘unpredictable’ reboot issues. “The fallout from the Meltdown and Spectre bugs continues to plague Intel. The company has been hit with lawsuits, users complained about performance drops, and some users found that their computers were rendered unbootable. For people with Broadwell and Haswell chips, there was a problem with random reboots, and as a result of this — some two weeks down the line — Intel is now advising people to stop installing its patches.”
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