Posted on 01/05/2018 6:33:00 AM PST by Red Badger
What are Meltdown and Spectre? Do they only affect Intel chips? Will the fixes slow my computer … and what even is a processor?
Meltdown and Spectre are the names of two serious security flaws that have been found within computer processors. They could allow hackers to steal sensitive data without users knowing, one of them affecting chips made as far back as 1995. What are Meltdown and Spectre?
Meltdown is a security flaw that could allow hackers to bypass the hardware barrier between applications run by users and the computer’s core memory, which is normally highly protected.
Spectre is slightly different. It potentially allows hackers to trick otherwise error-free applications into giving up secret information. Is it serious?
Yes. Meltdown is “probably one of the worst CPU bugs ever found” according to Daniel Gruss, one of the researchers at Graz University of Technology who discovered the flaw. It is very serious in the short term and needs immediate attention.
The problem with Meltdown is that anything that runs as an application could in theory steal your data, including simple things such as javascript from a web page viewed in a browser.
Spectre, on the other hand, is harder for hackers to take advantage of but is also more difficult to fix and is expected to be a bigger problem in the long term.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
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They call this a “bug”. Isn’t it in fact malicious software created by someone? The fact that isn’t mentioned tells me it is likely some Obama deep state concoction. They would be too quick to lay blame on Russia or China otherwise.
It’s a physical flaw in the chips, which pre-date Obama...................
It dates back to 1995, who knows where obama was back then, or much of anything about his various statuses?
It’s not a flaw, it’s a feature!
For the government!...................
ALL of them...............of course for those who believe in black helicopters and Illuminati and Bilderburgers and Hilton Head, then the ‘s’ isn’t necessary..............
Clinton administration.
Incidentally, I don’t know about you but I recall it floating around that intelligence and law enforcement wanted things like this.
I’m just cynical and suspicious enough to wonder if we’d know about these had Hillary been elected.
Did you know most people do not have an Antivirus program running and could careless , I think this is a bigger problem
Some are good and some are terrible. I use Malwarebytes.
But even a bad one is better than none.....................
I suspect that this is not a bug but instead another one of those exploits that the NSA forced on manufacturers and that got stolen from them with the Shadow Brokers issue.
I doubt this is deliberate, it is a design flaw. A very very subtle one too. Taking advantage of it, effectively, would be very difficult. Yes, you “could” get a password. What you’re really getting is “some data”, you can’t “target” some “password memory” - you’d need to know that a bit of data was a password.
Oh, so it's George Bush's fault, huh?
Some go back to 1995.................Clintons...................
Figures...and they were probably made in China too. The Clintons were, and probably still are tight with China.
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