Meltdown, Spectre: Almost Every Computing System Affected

Odds are, you own a smartphone or device that contains a chip that hackers could potentially manipulate to get access to sensitive information, like passwords. Read more here.

Referred to as Meltdown and Spectre, the two flaws exist in the processors. Meltdown appears to be specific to Intel (INTC) chips. Researchers say almost every computing system — desktops, laptops, smartphones and cloud servers — is affected by the Spectre bug.

Yesterday, Apple confirmed all Macs and iOS devices are affected by chip flaws.

CNN reports that Daniel Gruss, a researcher from Graz University of Technology who helped identify the flaw, says it may be difficult to execute an attack, but billions of devices were impacted.

So, what should you do?

To protect your environment from these security risks, we recommend applying patches as outlined below:

• If you’re running VMWare ESXi, this is the recommended patching.
• If you’re a customer who runs XenServer, we recommend referencing this link.
• For Windows Server Operating Systems, please reference this link.

More questions? Please don’t hesitate to contact our support team at 412-274-1112.