Intel has recently released gargantuan patches for Centrino laptops which have network chipsets as listed here. This issue doesn’t seem to have attracted as much media attention as compared to Dell’s exploding laptops [1], [2], [3].
F-Secure notes that the vulnerabilities involving the drivers are “pretty awful” and that the patch can be troublesome to download and install because of its size, 129MB.
However awful the vulnerabilities are, I don’t forsee the majority of end users to download a patch of that size. Besides that, users generally only update their device drivers when it stops working or is required for something else they want to use to function properly as compared to day-to-day application software which we are all more accustomed to updating it. Furthermore, this patch is to a generic driver which may or may not be compatible with the drivers released by individual manufacturers.
I don’t own a Centrino based notebook as mine’s a generation before it (with an addon WiFi card), but if you ask me whether you should download and install this..
Security experts note there are no known exploits publicly circulating that have been crafted to take advantage of these flaws.
..let’s all wait till one appears and it might turn into a 1.29MB patch instead. :D
_