There have been numerous reports of issues with the various patches issued by vendors, including Intel. Over the weekend it released an early version the fix for Broadwell and Haswell chips to OEMs, which it plans to release once testing is complete.
The chip maker began investigating its patch after users reported machines were unexpectedly rebooting after installing the update.
"We recommend that OEMs, cloud service providers, system manufacturers, software vendors and end users stop deployment of current [patch] versions", reads the statement, "as they may introduce higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behavior".
With Apple having their own remediation in progress, to fix the same issues on their home-grown processors for iOS devices, and AMD also caught up in this (although to a much lesser extent than Intel) this issue is one of the most pervasive and hard to remedy vulnerabilities I can recall. The stability issues were initially thought to be contained to older Broadwell and Haswell chips, but Intel confirmed last week it was also happening on Ivy Bridge, Sandy Bridge, Skylake, and Kaby Lake processors. Intel says it has "made good progress in developing a solution", so, assuming its forthcoming patch isn't also busted in some as-of-yet undetermined way, this mess may soon be in the rearview mirror.
Captive North Americans freed in Nigeria
Mukhtar Aliyu, a spokesman for Kaduna state police, said the Americans and Canadians were freed on Friday. One was killed while three others were released after negotiations.
Navin Shenoy, Intel's vice president of data centres, apologised for the the disruption and advised all users to stop applying the current patches.
The computer industry this month has been scrambling to address the Meltdown and Spectre attack methods, even though they knew about the security issues six months before details were publicly disclosed.
If you own a PC or Mac using an Intel processor and have been patiently waiting for Spectre and Meltdown patches appear on Windows Update or Mac App Store updates, you shouldn't download it.
