The U.S. government on Tuesday urged businesses to act on an Intel Corp. alert about security flaws in widely used computer chips, and industry researchers scrambled to understand the impact of the newly disclosed vulnerability.
The Department of Homeland Security gave the guidance a day after Intel said it had identified security vulnerabilities in remote-management software, known as Management Engine, that shipped with eight types of processors used in business computers sold by Dell Technologies, Lenovo Group, HP, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and other manufacturers.
Security experts said it was not clear how difficult it would be to exploit the vulnerabilities to launch attacks, though they found the disclosure troubling because the affected chips are widely used.