Securing Intel's Chips

While Intel has been scrambling to provide software patches for the Spectre and Meltdown processor vulnerabilities -- with mixed results -- the company is acknowledging that it will ultimately take a hardware fix to fully solve the issue. On Thursday, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich (pictured) told analysts that the company is now "working to incorporate silicon-based changes to future products that will directly address the Spectre and Meltdown threats in hardware." The Spectre and Meltdown exploits were revealed at the beginning of January and affect chips from multiple vendors, including AMD and ARM. The flaws, which account for three variants of a side-channel analysis security issue in server and PC processors, could potentially enable hackers to access protected data. While Intel partners praised the comments by Krzanich Thursday, a number of questions remain unanswered. What follows are five key questions about Intel's planned hardware fix for the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities.