Intel has made a great for itself over the years. It has expanded incredibly fast. Before it was in almost every PC in the market, and now it is in every Apple computer as well. It is estimated that over 95 percent of all cloud services and corporations have computers with Intel processors in them. So the revelation of potential security threats in their microprocessors has wide reaching consequences. In 1994 Intel faced its biggest crisis since its founding. A mathematics glitch that was present in their Pentium computer chips affected the accuracy of calculations run by computers with the chips inside them. The result of that crisis was an all out recall of the chips that cost the company $ 475 million. But today, with the information coming in about the 2 newly discovered security gaps in the chips, makes their 1994 crisis pale in comparison.

The two security gaps have been deemed Metldown and Spectre, and give hackers the ability to steal the entire memory contents of computers. Meltdown affects only Intel chips, but Spectre also affects other types of chips in the market which are used widely for most smartphones. The security issue was brought to intel’s attention on June of Last year, but news of the security issues didn’t reach consumers until last week. Intel said that it was on track to release the information this week, but needed time to remedy the situation before wide spread knowledge put its consumers’ computers at risk. News of this did come at the least opportune time for Intel as International CES kicks off Tuesday, one of the biggest tech conventions in the world. Now Intel will surely have to address the situation, which may take the spotlight of any new products they might be showing at CES. Intel has assured that it won’t recall any of its chips, and is confident that the programming tweaks it has released will close the security gaps in their chips. But this does have a potential of becoming a bigger problem than it is, intel holds a strong majority in the market which means that almost every computer in the world may be at risk.