Intel claims its CPUs have fewer new security bugs than AMD

Your next work laptop may be safer off having an Intel CPU than one from its great rival AMD, a new report from the former claims.

The Intel 2021 Product Security Report says (perhaps unsurprisingly) that its hardware has been affected by fewer newly discovered bugs compared to AMD offerings.

Even the flaws found in its GPU unit mostly come from AMD graphics components, the chipmaker claimed - although AMD is yet to comment on any of these findings. 

Bounty hunting

The report reveals a total of 16 new vulnerabilities were found in endpoints powered by Intel’s CPUs last years, whereas AMD’s chips have had 31. Almost half of the flaws found in its GPU units come from AMD’s components, Intel said.  

Of those 16 vulnerabilities, Intel found 10 itself, while the remaining six were discovered through its bug bounty program. As for the graphics, there had been a total of 51 flaws: 15 discovered in-house, and 36 through bounties. 

In fact, Intel’s in-house team was pretty busy. It claims that of the 226 CVEs published, 50% were discovered internally, by Intel’s employees, with 93% of vulnerabilities addressed come as a “direct result” of Intel’s investment in product security assurance, up from 92% a year ago. 

Another 43% of flaws were found through the bug bounty program, while the remaining 7% comes from open-source projects, or firms that are ineligible for the bounty hunting program.

"The security of our products is one of our most important priorities," Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger wrote in his introduction to the report. "We strive to design, manufacture and sell the world's most secure technology products, and we are continuously innovating and enhancing security capabilities for our products."

As reported by Tom’s Hardware, the way Intel treats flaws in the GPU is particularly interesting. The INTEL-SA-00481 CVE, found on Intel Core Processors with Radeon RX Vega M graphics, features 23 flaws for AMD’s components.

What’s more, of all the CVEs published in 2021, GPUs have had most vulnerabilities, followed by ethernet and software, both of which have had 34 flaws found. 

"At Intel, security comes first both in the way we work and in what we work on," the company noted. "Our culture and practices guide everything we build, with the goal of delivering the highest performance and optimal protections."

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Via: Tom’s Hardware