2018 is already gearing up to be a good ‘un. We’ve barely cleared away the detritus of the New Year’s party and there are already rumblings across tech sites that a bug on Intel CPUs (allegedly affecting all modern CPUs from the last decade or more) needs to be fixed with a patch that’ll slow down your computer. Possibly a lot. Possibly over 20% a lot.

The bug in question is a security vulnerability that could grant access to protected kernel memory if it isn’t fixed, but there aren’t a lot of details on the ground and the speculation is that there’s an embargo in operation due to lift this month. Blogger Python Sweetness and tech site The Register have been digging around for details, though.

The fix for the bug requires a patch that separates the kernel memory from normal programs. The problem is that they need to hand control back to the kernel for certain actions, and the switching back and forth is what will cause the slow down if you’ve got a machine running on an Intel CPU, which is most of us.

There are apparently software patches imminent for Microsoft and MacOS to fix the issue, with the Linux fix already out in the wild. The Register says that, ‘The effects are still being benchmarked, however we’re looking at a ballpark figure of five to 30 per cent slow down, depending on the task and the processor model.’ In a tweet posted yesterday it gave best and worst case figures of 17% and 23% respectively.

There isn’t a lot of detail on this still, but in essence it seems that you shouldn’t be worried about your security, just annoyed. The effects this could have on gaming in particular haven’t been fully explored but we’ll keep an eye out. 

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PostgreSQL SELECT 1 with the KPTI workaround for Intel CPU vulnerability https://t.co/N9gSvML2Fo

Best case: 17% slowdownWorst case: 23%

— The Register (@TheRegister) January 2, 2018

On a more fun note, apparently the Linux team were toying with the idea of calling their version of the patch Forcefully Unmap Complete Kernel With Interrupt Trampolines, or FUCKWIT, so they seem pretty pleased about the whole thing.