February 2018 - Although Spectre and Meltdown
are security flaws discovered in CPUs manufactured by Intel, they
also seem to be affecting CPUs manufactured by AMD as well as
ARM-based chips in mobile devices (Qualcomm and Samsung). Even
Apple recently admitted that its Mac computers and iOS devices are
affected. These security flaws do not exist in the device itself or
in its software, but in the architecture of its CPU.
Anyone who exploits these vulnerabilities can access sensitive
data stored on physical devices, such as desktops, laptops,
smartphones, and tablets as well as sensitive data stored in the
cloud. Meltdown allows attackers to access the system's memory
and steal sensitive data. Spectre takes a different approach,
tricking applications into disclosing sensitive information that
would otherwise be inaccessible.
