On 1/4/2018 10:03 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
"Major chip flaws affect billions of devices"

http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/03/tech...ity/index.html


"Called Meltdown and Spectre, the flaws exist in processors, a building
block of computers that acts as the brain. Modern processors are
designed to perform something called "speculative execution." That means
they predict what tasks they will be asked to execute and rapidly access
multiple areas of memory at the same time.

"That data is supposed to be protected and isolated, but researchers
discovered that in some cases, the information can be exposed while the
processor queues it up."

"Researchers say almost every computing system -- desktops, laptops,
smartphones, and cloud servers -- is affected by the Spectre bug.
Meltdown appears to be specific to Intel (INTC) chips."

Two snooping modes.Â* This is looking better by the day.

Lynn

"How to Protect Your Devices Against Meltdown, Spectre Bugs"

https://www.pcmag.com/news/358286/ho...n-spectre-bugs

"It's not just Intel machines. Here's everything you need to know about
how to protect your PC, Mac, and mobile device against the chip-level
security flaws that were disclosed this week."

Seems like the only true fix is to air gap all devices.

Lynn