While it is known that Intel chips are facing a bug that is affected by serious Kernel memory leak issue on modern computers including Windows, Linux, and macOS, the exact problem and explanation for this bug remained a mystery. Windows and Linux have already started pushing the updates that will fix the issue, we now have what the flaw is and they have been named 'Meltdown' and 'Spectre'. The Meltdown was independently discovered by three groups; researchers from the Technical University of Graz in Austria, German security firm Cerberus Security, and Google's Project Zero. On the other hand, 'Spectre' was found by Project Zero and independent researcher Paul Kocher. These bugs allow programs to steal data which is currently processed on the computer. Since programs are not allowed to read data from other programs, any malicious software or program can exploit Meltdown and Spectre to gain access to passwords, browser data, your personal photos, emails, instant messages, etc. stored in the memory of other running programs. These bugs can work on personal computers, mobile devices, and can even steal cloud data. The 'Meltdown' attack allows a program to access the memory, and gain access to secrets, on the other hand, Spectre allows an attacker to trick error-free programs, which are ...
Thursday, 4 January 2018
Meltdown and Spectre security flaw on Intel, AMD, ARM CPUs affect most computers and phones
While it is known that Intel chips are facing a bug that is affected by serious Kernel memory leak issue on modern computers including Windows, Linux, and macOS, the exact problem and explanation for this bug remained a mystery. Windows and Linux have already started pushing the updates that will fix the issue, we now have what the flaw is and they have been named 'Meltdown' and 'Spectre'. The Meltdown was independently discovered by three groups; researchers from the Technical University of Graz in Austria, German security firm Cerberus Security, and Google's Project Zero. On the other hand, 'Spectre' was found by Project Zero and independent researcher Paul Kocher. These bugs allow programs to steal data which is currently processed on the computer. Since programs are not allowed to read data from other programs, any malicious software or program can exploit Meltdown and Spectre to gain access to passwords, browser data, your personal photos, emails, instant messages, etc. stored in the memory of other running programs. These bugs can work on personal computers, mobile devices, and can even steal cloud data. The 'Meltdown' attack allows a program to access the memory, and gain access to secrets, on the other hand, Spectre allows an attacker to trick error-free programs, which are ...
