https://monctonlife.com/2018/05/pr-the-saga-continues-intel-addresses-new-research-for-side-channel-variant-4-attacks.html
 
The critical security problems of Spectre have forced Intel to invest more effort with worldwide researchers to find solutions to these types of similar exploits. Intel knows it has a reputation to uphold as well as the faith of companies that purchase their products. I personally believe Intel backed themselves against a wall and they have now doubled their efforts in security.

Cool GTX
On CPU hardware encryption is about all they can do in the future ---> someone will still break that eventually
 
My understanding, the black hats still need access to your network first

It doesn't help the fact that Intel has stopped developing firmware fixes for anything past Broadwell, and that some OEMs have refused to even address anything before Skylake.  There are so many "legacy" systems in deployment that are on the internet, which blackhats have access to, that it's not even funny.  This is extremely serious, and Intel is basically taking the "you need to replace everything because we seriously can't fix this" attitude.  All it takes is a legacy OS with an unpatchable browser.  Currently just over 6% of the world's PC's use windows xp, another 6% use a combination of 8 and 8.1.  Then there is the other 44.1% who use windows 7, whose support ends Jan 14, 2020.
 
You're thinking short term here.  There are still lots of people who are rocking Windows 7 because "10 sucks".  These people are going to be unpatchable, and they will all be rocking exploitable hardware because "4790k still gets me 100fps", just like the 2600k still rocks with the right card.  All these system are on the internet, and every single one of them is one web page away from being owned, all because Intel refuses to fix the problem, and manufacturers don't want to spend the resources to repair stuff out of warranty.

Bruno747

Cool GTX
On CPU hardware encryption is about all they can do in the future ---> someone will still break that eventually
 
My understanding, the black hats still need access to your network first

Thus far everything I have seen requires an already exploited box. At which point you are pretty well screwed anyway.

I hate to burst your bubble.  This isn't the BS that, that fake Isreali security team tried to pull on AMD.  This is as simple as visiting a web page.