CREDIT SUISSE: People are making 'mountains from molehills' over Intel's security flaw (INTC, AMD)

pulse

January 4, 2018 3:57 PM

Flaws in the central processing units of many manufacturers rocked the computing world on Wednesday.

Flaws in the central processing units of many manufacturers rocked the computing world on Wednesday.
Credit Suisse says the flaws really aren't a big deal because there are already patches, and the issue will be eliminated with future hardware.

Intel's central processing units have a major security flaw that requires all operating systems to be patched and could slow down systems by as much as 30%. But it's not really a big deal, Credit Suisse said on Thursday.

John Pitzer, an analyst at Credit Suisse, had four main reasons for thinking that everyone is making "mountains from molehills" regarding the Intel chip flaw.

The chip flaw was originally discovered by Google engineers and has to do with a problem in the CPU hardware. The flaw allows hackers to exploit how programs talk to the computer hardware to extract sensitive information stored in the system memory.

The flaw affects Intel CPUs produced over the last decade and would affect any computer using the chips, regardless of operating system. Google informed Intel and other chip manufacturers of the flaw months ago, and programmers have been working to patch the flaw since then.

Intel's stock slumped on Wednesday after the news was reported, while rival AMD's share soared. Pitzer said that while Intel's chips are perhaps the most vulnerable, parts of the flaw also exist in ARM and AMD chips.

Pitzer is neutral Intel because he thinks it's expensive. His price target of $42 is just below its current price of $43.19.

Intel shares are down 5.09% at $42.97 on Thursday and have fallen 7.75% since the news broke on Wednesday.

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