False alarm: despite a patch notes suggesting otherwise, that mysterious blob of microcode released for many Intel microprocessors last week was not a security update, the x86 giant says.
In an email Monday, an Intel spokesperson told
The Register that microcode-20230512, which popped up on the manufacturer's
GitHub page “does not contain any security updates and the note, [INTEL-SA-NA], is meant to convey that there are no applicable (Not Applicable) security updates in the package.”
The update caught many users
attention over the weekend as it affected nearly every Intel CPU going back to 2017. This includes most of Intel’s latest chips, such as its 13th-gen Core-series parts and 4th-Gen Xeon Scalable datacenter parts.
Unfortunately, Intel isn’t being forthcoming about what exactly the patch does. Its purpose was simply listed as “security updates for Intel-SA-NA,” which many, including
Phoronix, took to the NA to mean it was a security update with a release advisory “not available.” We now know it meant “not applicable,” and that the update simply contains “functional updates.”
