Intel CEO sold $24M in stock after firm knew about cyber vulnerabilities

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich sold more than $20 million worth of company stock after his company had been informed of a massive cybersecurity flaw in its chips and prior to the company publicly disclosing the flaw.

Krzanich sold stock and exercised options worth a rough total of $24 million on Nov. 29, reducing his holdings of Intel shares to 245,743 — the minimum required by his contract with the firm. The Intel CEO’s sale occurred as developers were racing to fix enormous vulnerabilities in their computer processors.

Though the sale raises insider trading concerns, the Securities and Exchange Commission has not publicly said if it will investigate Krzanich.

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Intel says that his selloff came independently of the vulnerabilities and notes that it was preplanned.

“Brian’s sale is unrelated,” an Intel spokesperson told Gizmodo.

Krzanich disclosed his plan to sell Intel shares in October, according to an SEC filing from Oct. 30.

But Google had previously notified Intel of the vulnerability in June, according to Business Insider. Google along with firms like Apple, AMD and Mozilla also have the same flaws in their chips, which allow products using them to be easily compromised by hackers.

Daniel Gruss, a researcher on the team at Graz University of Technology, which discovered one of the bugs, told Reuters that it is “probably one of the worst [central processing unit] bugs ever found.”