This talk from the 32c3 just two weeks ago looks at exactly that problem. They have &quot;chicken bits&quot; (not sure if that&#x27;s the technical term :)) which can turn off certain features, and they can patch microcode.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;media.ccc.de&#x2F;v&#x2F;32c3-7171-when_hardware_must_just_work" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;media.ccc.de&#x2F;v&#x2F;32c3-7171-when_hardware_must_just_wor...</a><p><pre><code>  Software design and testing is hard, but what happens when each bug fix can cost months of delay and millions of dollars? In this talk we’ll take a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges in the design of a very complex, yet critical piece of hardware: the modern x86 CPU.</code></pre>