Billions of Computer & Mobile Devices Affected by Chip Flaws

Billions of devices have been affected by two major security flaws revealed by cybersecurity researchers this week.

The flaws named Meltdown and Spectre, affect processing chips made by Intel, AMD and ARM Holdings. Therefore, all computers, smartphones, and cloud services from Apple, Google, Amazon, & Microsoft may be vulnerable.

 

In an announcement, Apple said it has released mitigations to defend against Meltdown in iOS 11.2, macOS 10.13.2, and tvOS 11.2. And it will release mitigations in Safari to defend against the Spectre bug in the coming days.

Apple users should make sure their computers, iOS devices, and all apps they use are kept up to date to protect themselves against hackers exploiting the flaws.

On the other hand, Microsoft has already released security updates for Windows users, and is taking steps to protect users of its cloud computing services. Google and Amazon are also updating their cloud services. 

 

An unfortunate downside of the software updates is that they might slow computers & smartphones.