Two recent bugs are affecting every computer on Earth

Two bugs disclosed by security researchers have recently taken the internet by storm as they are reportedly affecti
04 Jan, 2018

Two bugs disclosed by security researchers have recently taken the internet by storm as they are reportedly affecting every single device around the world.

Named as ‘Meltdown’ and ‘Spectre’, these bugs expose the personal and important information that is stored deep inside a computer. These are the recent majorly discovered errors in all modern CPUs and are present in the processors’ architecture, which lets the numerous transistors and logic units work to carry out instructions. These bugs expose all sensitive data including passwords, proprietary information, and encrypted communications, reported Tech Crunch.

Affecting almost every device like computers, laptops, phones, tablets etc., Meltdown affects Intel processors and Spectre affects Intel, AMD, and ARM processors and is also on its way to reach every device that has a chip on it including mobile phones.

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Daniel Gruss, who discovered Meltdown, called it “probably one of the worst CPU bugs ever found.”

Moreover, till now, these bugs can only be partially fixed and fixing them completely would take some time. Fixing Meltdown would cause a 5%-30% decrease in Intel chips’ performance whereas the Spectre is probably not going to be fully fixed any time soon.

In an interview with CNBC, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said, “Phones, PCs, everything are going to have some impact, but it’ll vary from product to product.”

In order to protect devices from damaging attacks, Microsoft has issued a software hack for Windows, Amazon has started to update many servers, and ARM has a set of improvements for its affected chips. However, like previous such bugs, these devices cannot be recalled as they affect billions of devices.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2018

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