Intel processor security flaw requires OS kernel level fix

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/mic...ndows-systems/

With Windows 10 on older silicon (2015-era PCs with Haswell or older CPU), some benchmarks show more significant slowdowns, and we expect that some users will notice a decrease in system performance.
With Windows 8 and Windows 7 on older silicon (2015-era PCs with Haswell or older CPU), we expect most users to notice a decrease in system performance.

For context, on newer CPUs such as on Skylake and beyond, Intel has refined the instructions used to disable branch speculation to be more specific to indirect branches, reducing the overall performance penalty of the Spectre mitigation. Older versions of Windows have a larger performance impact because Windows 7 and Windows 8 have more user-kernel transitions because of legacy design decisions, such as all font rendering taking place in the kernel. We will publish data on benchmark performance in the weeks ahead.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It looks like some US Senators are pushing for an investigation of the Intel CEO:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-s-share-sales

U.S. Senators Urge Government to Probe Intel CEO's Share Sales

Two key U.S. senators are pushing authorities to investigate whether Intel Corp. Chief Executive Officer Brian Krzanich violated insider-trading rules when he sold off a chunk of his shares in the chipmaker late last year.
News reports that more than $20 million in share sales by Krzanich were scheduled in October of last year before the company made public that its processors were vulnerable to hackers are “troubling,” Senators Jack Reed and John Kennedy wrote in Tuesday letters to the Securities Exchange Commission and the Justice Department. Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, and Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, are members of the Senate Banking Committee.

“These reports are troubling not only because of the risk to nearly all phones and computers, but also because these reports raise concerns of potential insider trading,” the senators wrote. “If you uncover such violations through your examinations, we expect you to enforce our laws to the fullest extent possible.”

Read More: Intel CEO Krzanich’s Stock Sales Seen Warranting SEC Examination

The bipartisan request for an investigation adds to pressure on Intel, which has said Krzanich’s share sales were pre-arranged. Still, his most recent sales were much bigger than usual and the timing didn’t match his usual trading style, prompting securities lawyers to predict that they might draw regulatory scrutiny.

“Intel is aware of the letter released by Senators Kennedy and Reed,” the company said in an emailed statement. “We will cooperate fully with any governmental inquiries or investigations.”

An SEC spokeswoman declined to comment, while a Justice Department spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The story behind how the vulnerability was discovered:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...try-s-meltdown

It seems this was talked about a year ago!!

[Corky34]

It looks like some US Senators are pushing for an investigation of the Intel CEO:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-s-share-sales

Can you be done for insider trading if the share price remains high though, I've not looked at Intel share prices but if they've not changed much because of these vulnerabilities isn't it going to be hard to argue he cashed in before the bad new hit.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Can you be done for insider trading if the share price remains high though, I've not looked at Intel share prices but if they've not changed much because of these vulnerabilities isn't it going to be hard to argue he cashed in before the bad new hit.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/shareh...18-1?r=US&IR=T

Institutional investors are talking to plaintiffs lawyers about potentially filing suit against Intel over CEO Brian Krzanich's massive stock sale in November.
Krzanich gained some $24 million by selling all the shares and options he was allowed to sell under a plan he put in place only the month before. His plan was put in place months after Intel was informed of a major security vulnerability in its chips.
There's a good chance the stock sale will draw the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission and could lead to an internal investigation by Intel's board, legal experts said.

[Corky34]

Well yes i already knew that, what I'm saying is if the stock price hasn't changed much because of these vulnerabilities isn't it going to be hard to argue he cashed in before the bad new hit, the fact that he's gain from selling his shares isn't the question as no matter what his stock options would've seen him gain as stock options allow you to buy X amount of stocks at X% under market value.

The real question is if he gain more by selling them before the vulnerability was made public than afterwards.

[DanceswithUnix]

The real question is if he gain more by selling them before the vulnerability was made public than afterwards.

I kind of wondered the same. I presume this is a regular thing as options tend to be periodic, in which case if he did exactly the same last year he has a pretty good story. Might not be enough mind, but I imagine he would have gotten advice before going ahead.

The flip side, if every year the Intel CEO sells off and this year he didn't, then that could be noticed and influence the market. I can't see how he could win.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Krzanich gained some $24 million by selling all the shares and options he was allowed to sell under a plan he put in place only the month before. His plan was put in place months after Intel was informed of a major security vulnerability in its chips.

Well yes i already knew that, what I'm saying is if the stock price hasn't changed much because of these vulnerabilities isn't it going to be hard to argue he cashed in before the bad new hit, the fact that he's gain from selling his shares isn't the question as no matter what his stock options would've seen him gain as stock options allow you to buy X amount of stocks at X% under market value.

The real question is if he gain more by selling them before the vulnerability was made public than afterwards.

I kind of wondered the same. I presume this is a regular thing as options tend to be periodic, in which case if he did exactly the same last year he has a pretty good story. Might not be enough mind, but I imagine he would have gotten advice before going ahead.

The flip side, if every year the Intel CEO sells off and this year he didn't, then that could be noticed and influence the market. I can't see how he could win.

Read the articles more carefully:
1.)Knows about a problem with Intel CPUs
2.)Instigates a precedure so he can offload as much stock as possible
3.)Offloads stock to the minimum level before Intel mentions the problem

That is the conflict of interest.

It has already gone down,but investigators don't care by how much since its more the case,he knew about the issue,then instigated a process to sell his shares to the minimum level he needed to have as CEO before it was announced. He anticpated issues and sold them before they and nobody should try to excuse make for that - if not nobody should have an excuse to criticise any politician in this country for conflicts of interest.

That is called insider trading.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

DF tested the patch - some games like the W3 suffer the most,ie,games which stream data.



Ones which stream less data are less affected.

[Xlucine]

Well yes i already knew that, what I'm saying is if the stock price hasn't changed much because of these vulnerabilities isn't it going to be hard to argue he cashed in before the bad new hit, the fact that he's gain from selling his shares isn't the question as no matter what his stock options would've seen him gain as stock options allow you to buy X amount of stocks at X% under market value.

The real question is if he gain more by selling them before the vulnerability was made public than afterwards.

From google:

Looks like a ~7% drop to me

[Corky34]

Read the articles more carefully:
1.)Knows about a problem with Intel CPUs
2.)Instigates a precedure so he can offload as much stock as possible
3.)Offloads stock to the minimum level before Intel mentions the problem

That is the conflict of interest.

It has already gone down,but investigators don't care by how much since its more the case,he knew about the issue,then instigated a process to sell his shares to the minimum level he needed to have as CEO before it was announced. He anticpated issues and sold them before they and nobody should try to excuse make for that - if not nobody should have an excuse to criticise any politician in this country for conflicts of interest.

That is called insider trading.

Before flipping your lid even more I'm not saying he's not made money from off loading his stock options, he was always going to profit from selling his stock options as that's the whole idea of taking options, part of his contract meant he could take X percentage of X value in X amount of *reduced* value stocks, IIRC the stocks he took at the time were reduced in value to something like $26 because of the discount afford to him in his contract as CEO, basically Intel gave him part of his wages in the form of less than market value shares in the company.

It's not that there's a conflict of interests or whether he profited from the sale of his stock options, the question is if he profited *more* by selling them before the vulnerability was made public than afterwards and judging by when he filed his form 4 with SEC back in October the value of Intel stocks have actually gone up by roughly $4 so an argument can't be made that he profited *more* from selling his stock options before the vulnerability became public.

Looks like a ~7% drop to me

Not from when he filled his Form 4 with SEC back in October

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Re-repeat of previous post,next one has more info added to previous one.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/04/inte...ity-flaws.html

Brian Krzanich, chief executive officer of Intel Corp.
Intel CEO: We're working to patch security issue
5:12 PM ET Wed, 3 Jan 2018 | 03:17

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich sold off a large chunk of his stake in the company last year — after the chipmaker was already aware of serious security flaws in its computer processors, according to multiple reports.

The chipmaker did not immediately respond to CNBC's emailed request for comments sent outside U.S. office hours.

Other outlets have reported an Intel spokeswoman said Krzanich's decision to sell the shares was unrelated to the security vulnerability disclosed this week.

According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing in late November, Krzanich acquired and sold 644,135 shares at a weighted average price of $44.05 by exercising his options. Those options let him purchase the shares at prices between $12.985 and $26.795, significantly lower than where Intel was trading at the time.

He sold another 245,743 shares that he already owned at a weighted average of $44.55. That brought down the total number of shares he owns to 250,000 — which is the minimum number of shares that the CEO of Intel is required to own, according to a Motley Fool report. Krzanich sold all of those shares for a little over $39 million, apparently netting about $25 million.

The filing showed that the sales were part of a 10b5-1 plan, which was created on Oct. 30, just a month before Krzanich sold the shares. The 10b5-1 is a trading plan that company executives set up to sell stocks they own at a pre-determined time so that they are not accused of insider trading.

Multiple outlets, however, have reported that Intel and other chip makers were notified of the security vulnerabilities in June.

Security researchers released documentation this week of critical vulnerabilities in modern processors used on almost every computer around the world. The hardware bugs — known as Meltdown and Spectre could allow programs to steal data including "passwords stored in a password manager or browser, your personal photos, emails, instant messages and even business-critical documents."

While Meltdown is specific to Intel processors, and can be patched, Spectre affects Intel, AMD and ARM processors — meaning almost every device that uses a chip — and is harder to fix. That sent the computer industry scrambling to patch those vulnerabilities. Though there are no known exploits for the problem yet, what is alarming is the fact that it can potentially affect millions of devices.

He sold almost all his stocks at between $44 to $44.5,and he had nearly 1.15 million shares.

Now he has only 250000 which is the minimum amount. He sold nearly 900000 shares and he set it up HIMSELF.

So he and his mates knew about the issue in 1H 2017,then their first priority was to set up a new trading plan to divest 80% of his own shares with the company to the minimum level and then sit on the vulnerability after the Christmas period.

Intel stock is now $43 AND IT IS STILL GOING DOWN. So he made $1 to $1.50 extra per share. He made over a $1 million extra by selling it in October/November.

Edit!!

Why do you think investors want to take him to court - they are the people who probably bought those shares off him.

Also how convenient AFTER he knew about the issue,HE set up an "automated" selling plan to ditch almost all his stock.

Yes,it is all coincidence. TOTALLY.

Second Edit!!

Plus are people so trusting they think these kind of people won't try some tricks after the sub-prime disaster??

OFC,they will and this is why we need all these investigative offices in the first place. If they can get away with something they will.

I am sure they will lawyer this up and drag this out for the next few years and the authorities will get fed up and they will come to an arrangement and sweep it under the carpet. Intel did the same with the crap they pulled with AMD,and still have not even paid the EU fine yet due to the crap they did to AMD and that was imposed nearly a decade ago.

It pisses me off since anyone with a Haswell or earlier system is not going to 100% get BIOS updates for their motherboards which means for the time-being people are more vulnerable online and plus there will be performance drops depending on what you run.

In the end that will end up forcing more people to reach into their pocket earlier than they wanted to buy a new system especially with the price fixing happening with RAM,and OFC for those who are still on Windows 7 and Windows,you better like Windows 10 quicker now.

But don't worry the Intel CEO made another $1 million.

[Lanky123]

To be fair, why are CEOs allowed to trade stock in the companies they run anyway - surely any trade they make is insider trading. This just looks like a particularly egregious example because of the necessary secrecy involved for several months. I would be suspicious at other times as well - the CEO should know far more about the prospects of the company than regular shareholders.

If a company wants the CEO to *own* stock that's fine - but surely it could go into a trust or something that they can't touch until they leave the position.

[Corky34]

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/04/inte...ity-flaws.html

BTW putting quotes from opinion pieces from online media outlets in big bold fonts doesn't lend anymore weight to what you're saying, it just comes across as being rather passive aggressive.

He sold almost all his stocks at between $44 to $44.5,and he had nearly 1.15 million shares.

Now he has only 250000 which is the minimum amount. He sold nearly 900000 shares and he set it up HIMSELF.

So he and his mates knew about the issue in 1H 2017,then their first priority was to set up a new trading plan to divest 80% of his own shares with the company to the minimum level and then sit on the vulnerability after the Christmas period.

Intel stock is now $43 AND IT IS STILL GOING DOWN. So he made $1 to $1.50 extra per share. He made over a $1 million extra by selling it in October/November.

There seems to be a misunderstanding of how stock options work, yes he sold his stock options between $44 to $44.5 but that was a month after he committed to selling them at the £39 price in October, that's what a SEC form 4 does, it commits you to selling stocks in one months time and is intended to prevent insider trading, it's meant to prevent employes from quickly off loading stock a few days or weeks before something that effects the price is made public and devalues that stock.

The fact that the stocks were sold at a higher price than when he committed to selling them in a months time doesn't change anything in a meaningful way, the only thing that would change that would be if the stock price fell lower than the price at the time he committed to the sale.

Why do you think investors want to take him to court - they are the people who probably bought those shares off him.

Also how convenient AFTER he knew about the issue,HE set up an "automated" selling plan to ditch almost all his stock.

Yes,it is all coincidence. TOTALLY.

Investors are not the Securities and Exchange Commission, of course they're smarting, who wouldn't if a stock they invested in started to fall.

However the falling value of stocks are not grounds for legal action, no matter how much investors probably wish it were.

Yes he setup an automated selling plan but that automated selling plan was put in place when the value of the stock was around £39 so unless Intel stocks fall lower than that it would be very difficult to say he cashed in before the bad news became public.

<Snip>
But don't worry the Intel CEO made another $1 million.

I'm not defending him or Intel, despite appearances, I'd love to see an overpaid CEO of a multinational company hauled over the coals, however I'm also a pragmatist and unless it can be proven that he gained *more* financially by committing to selling his stock when the price was around £39 before the information became public then IMO there's a not a case to be made that he cashed in before the stock price fell as it's actually gone up from when he committed to selling them.

EDIT: Just to add I'm also not saying that what he did wasn't dodgy, or that it's not got noses twitching in the SEC, I mean if Intel's stock price fell bellow the level it was when he committed to selling them, and it may still, then he'd be bang to rights, however legally unless Intel's stock price falls below the level that it was when he committed to selling it would be near impossible to have him for insider trading, and even then it would need to be a sustained fall in value.

[Xlucine]

Not from when he filled his Form 4 with SEC back in October

Good point, you're right

To be fair, why are CEOs allowed to trade stock in the companies they run anyway - surely any trade they make is insider trading. This just looks like a particularly egregious example because of the necessary secrecy involved for several months. I would be suspicious at other times as well - the CEO should know far more about the prospects of the company than regular shareholders.

If a company wants the CEO to *own* stock that's fine - but surely it could go into a trust or something that they can't touch until they leave the position.

If the CEO owns stock then an easy way for them to make more money is to make the company perform better - it's another incentive to not ride the company into the ground, and promote business practices that are better in the long run (hopefully)