Three class action complaints have been filed against Intel over the Meltdown and Spectre CPU security flaws that were discovered by researchers earlier this year and widely publicized earlier this week.
The three lawsuits—filed in California, Indiana, and Oregon (PDF)—cite not just the security vulnerabilities and their potential impact, but also Intel’s response time to them. Researchers notified Intel about the flaws in June. Now, Intel faces a big headache. The vast majority of its CPUs in use today are impacted, and more class action complaints may be filed beyond these three.
The three complaints also cite suggestions that devices using Intel’s CPUs will see significant slowdown as a result of addressing the security flaws. However, that point is in some dispute. In the course of its various public efforts to mitigate damage and address concerns, Intel has publicly said in a statement that these concerns are overblown: