Massive CPU security flaws get a name: Meltdown (intel only) and Spectre -- what you need to know

The flaws have received the names Meltdown and Spectre, and both potentially allow hackers to steal personal data from computers, including mobile devices and cloud servers, without leaving a trace. Both holes could be exploited to get access data stored in the memory of other running programs. A practical example would be your passwords stored in a password manager or browser, your personal emails, or business-critical documents.

If that isn’t bad enough, patching the issue might slow down the performance of a CPU by up to 35 percent (a realistic worst-case scenario). At the moment we’re running preliminary tests on Windows 10 covering storage, gaming and applications to see what the immediate effects are to the average user.

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Meltdown affects only intel CPUs but there are already OS patches (that also reduce the performance of these CPUs).

But for Spectre :ghost: :ghost: :ghost:
there are no patches and it affects Intel, AMD and many ARM processors (smartphones, tablets…). The only good thing is that it is harder to exploit.

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It’s the first I’ve heard of this thanks for posting Zeno. I don’t have any Intel CPUs in my devices, so at least I’m not vulnerable to ‘meltdown.’ /me goes to update his OS’s.

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