Processors by Intel, AMD and ARM May Be Effected

A new computer virus has hit millions of devices by Microsoft and Apple. These vulnerabilities are currently known as Meltdown and Spectre.

Currently Microsoft, Google and Apple are all working on patches to help resolve this issue.

Meltdown and Spectre uses a technique that abuse memory on digital devices. It involves the misuse of the computer’s kernel as a malicious app running on a device.

Google has reported three known variants of the issue:
  • Variant 1: bounds check bypass (CVE-2017-5753)
  • Variant 2: branch target injection (CVE-2017-5715)
  • Variant 3: rogue data cache load (CVE-2017-5754)

Apple has released a statement today covering this topic:

‘Security researchers have recently uncovered security issues known by two names, Meltdown and Spectre. These issues apply to all modern processors and affect nearly all computing devices and operating systems. All Mac systems and iOS devices are affected, but there are no known exploits impacting customers at this time. Since exploiting many of these issues requires a malicious app to be loaded on your Mac or iOS device, we recommend downloading software only from trusted sources such as the App Store. Apple has already released mitigations in iOS 11.2, macOS 10.13.2, and tvOS 11.2 to help defend against Meltdown. Apple Watch is not affected by Meltdown. In the coming days we plan to release mitigations in Safari to help defend against Spectre. We continue to develop and test further mitigations for these issues and will release them in upcoming updates of iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS.’