Meltdown, Spectre: Major chip flaws affect billions of devices - Jan. 3, 2018
Two major flaws in computer chips could leave a huge number of computers and smartphones vulnerable to security concerns, researchers revealed Wednesday. And a U.S. government-backed body warned that the chips themselves need to be replaced to completely fix the problems.
Called Meltdown and Spectre, the flaws exist in processors, a building block of computers that acts as the brain. Modern processors are designed to perform something called "speculative execution." That means they predict what tasks they will be asked to execute and rapidly access multiple areas of memory at the same time.
Called Meltdown and Spectre, the flaws exist in processors, a building block of computers that acts as the brain. Modern processors are designed to perform something called "speculative execution." That means they predict what tasks they will be asked to execute and rapidly access multiple areas of memory at the same time.
A spokesperson for Microsoft (MSFT) told CNNMoney the company is aware of the issue and is in the process of deploying mitigations to cloud services and has released security updates to protect Windows users.
Google's Cloud Platform has been updated to prevent the vulnerabilities, the company said.
Amazon (AMZN) said in a statement most of its cloud computing machines affected by the flaw are already protected, but it was updating the rest on Wednesday.
Apple (AAPL) revealed Thursday that all its Mac and iOS devices were affected by the flaws, but said that "there are no known exploits impacting customers at this time." The company has already released some fixes for
