Intel is accused of hiding from the American authorities the problems of its own processors due to the Meltdown and Specter vulnerabilities, although it would have notified some Asian partners. It seems that Intel's decision to hide this information is based on the fact that the hackers had not had time to exploit any computer based on these vulnerabilities.
Intel had a legal obligation to notify an institution within the US government about these vulnerabilities, but decided not to do so, although other partners knew about them. Alphabet, the "mother" company of Google, claims that it provided information about these vulnerabilities to Intel and AMD since June 2017, but did not learn about them until 2018.
Apple refused to comment on the situation, but Google gave Intel more than 90 days before speaking publicly about processor vulnerabilities. Intel claims that the lack of evidence that the vulnerabilities are exploited by hackers motivated it not to make disclosures to the authorities, but its partners learned about them in advance.
"Intel Corp did not inform US cyber security officials of the so-called Meltdown and Specter chip security flaws until they leaked to the public, six months after Alphabet Inc notified the chipmaker of the problems, according to letters sent by tech companies to lawmakers on Thursday.”
These partners in turn notified other companies, and so the American government was the only one who did not find out, although those from Intel had a legal obligation to notify them about it. Of course, the public did not know about the major vulnerability in Intel processors, and when it was revealed, there was no patch, as they were not available even 2 months after the announcement.
