Home > News

After ZombieLoad Security Flaw Found in Intel Chips, Tech Companies Step Up to Add Patches

By Laura Tucker
News Intel Zombieload Featured

Just as quickly as a security flaw was found and noted in Intel clips, major tech companies stepped up to the plate to fix it. Companies such as Apple, Microsoft, and Google have implemented software patches to mitigate the risk of the ZomebieLoad security flaw. Read on to find out if your system is now protected or if there is something you need to do to rectify the problem.

Protect Your Data from ZombieLand

The ZombieLoad security flaw affected nearly every Intel chip in computers that were released from 2011 and beyond. The technical name for the flaw is microarchitectural data sampling (MDS). It’s similar to the Meltdown and Spectre flaws that were announced last year.

The security flaw is vulnerable to four new attacks that can leak sensitive data, such as passwords, secret keys, account tokens, and private messages. Luckily, many tech companies have released patches to address the flaw.

Every Mac and MacBook released during and after 2011 was affected, but Apple patched all systems running macOS Mojave 10.14.5 and beyond. It will prevent an attack through Safari, as well as other apps. Additionally, users who are worried can enable additional CPU instruction, but this could lead to a 40 percent reduction in performance. The security update will also be pushed to Sierra and High Sierra versions of macOS. Mobile devices are not affected.

Google reports that the “vast majority” of Android devices aren’t affected but Intel-only devices will need to be patched once that is available. Devices running the latest version of Chrome OS are already protected. Google’s data centers have been patched to take care of cloud customers, and those using Chrome should rely on patches for their system.

News Intel Zombieload Risk

Mozilla also has a long-term fix on the way for the Firefox browser. They applied the mitigation that was recommended by Apple on macOS, and it will be part of an upcoming Firefox release. Firefox Beta and Firefox Nightly already include the change, and no action is recommended for Firefox users on Windows and Linux.

Microsoft has released patches for both its operating system and cloud. Senior director Jeff Jones said they are “working to deploy mitigations to cloud services and release security updates.” Users may need to obtain a microcode update for their processor from the device manufacturer, while the company is pushing updates through Windows Update. Microsoft Azure customers are already protected.

Amazon Web Services has been updated to prevent attacks. They posted an advisory that said, “All EC2 host infrastructure has been updated with these new protections, and no customer action is required.”

Are You Protected

While it’s reassuring that the tech companies have jumped up to take care of the security flaw, the fact that such a wide flaw as ZombieLoad even exists is frightening enough as it is, leaving questions of whether there could be other potential widespread problems.

Chances are you were hit in some way by the Intel Zombieload security flaw. Has your system already been patched, or do you have to take action on your part to solve the problem? Let us know in the comments below.

Subscribe to our newsletter!

Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox

Laura Tucker Avatar
Laura Tucker
Laura has spent more than 20 years writing news, reviews, and op-eds, with the majority of those years as an editor as well. She has exclusively used Apple products for the past 35 years. In addition to writing and editing at MTE, she also runs the site’s sponsored review program.

Read next

When the SS Great Eastern laid the first working transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866, a message that had taken ten days by steamship suddenly crossed the ocean in minutes, and the financial markets of London and New York were forced, within a single trading week, to invent the modern concept of synchronised global price.
From below of blue starry sky over radio telescope and trees with leaves
The Big Ear telescope was scanning at 1420.4056 megahertz on the night of 15 August 1977, the exact frequency at which hydrogen atoms vibrate across the universe, because Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison had argued years earlier that any species trying to be found would broadcast on that channel — and then, for 72 seconds, something did.
In 2016, archaeologists dated two rings of snapped stalagmites in France’s Bruniquel Cave to 176,500 years ago, evidence that Neanderthals had walked 336 metres into darkness with fire and built architecture deep underground long before modern humans reached Europe
Otto von Bismarck was 74 when Germany adopted the world’s first national old-age social insurance program in 1889, setting the pension age at 70 after years of fighting socialists with bans, laws, and a promise few workers would live long enough to use
When cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov stepped out of his Soyuz capsule in March 1995 after 437 consecutive days aboard Mir, doctors recorded him at several centimetres above his pre-flight height, and his spine had become so unaccustomed to gravity that the recovery team carried him to a chair rather than risk the compression of letting him walk.
When Bell Labs engineer Karl Jansky pointed a rotating antenna at the sky in 1932 looking for sources of transatlantic radio static, he kept picking up a faint hiss that peaked every 23 hours and 56 minutes, and he eventually realized he had become the first human to hear the center of the Milky Way.
A contemplative scene with two scientists in a vintage laboratory setting.
When Harvard astronomer Cecilia Payne submitted her 1925 doctoral thesis arguing that the Sun was made almost entirely of hydrogen, the field’s senior figure Henry Norris Russell talked her into adding a line calling the result ‘almost certainly not real,’ and then published the same conclusion himself four years later to widespread acclaim.
When seismic waves from the Chicxulub impact reached what is now North Dakota roughly ten minutes after the asteroid struck, they appear to have triggered a ten-metre standing wave in an inland river that flung fish onto the bank and buried them under glass beads still falling from the sky.