MIT researchers say memory splitting breakthrough could prevent another Meltdown or Spectre

Virtually every modern computer processor was thrown under the bus earlier this year when researchers found a fundamental design weakness in Intel, AMD and ARM chips, making it possible to steal sensitive data from the computer’s memory. The Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities — which date back to 1995 — punched holes in the walls that […]

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Google Chrome’s new protection against Meltdown and Spectre bugs will slow your computer down

Good news! Google has added new safeguards to its Chrome web browser to protect you from the critical Meltdown and Spectre CPU vulnerabilities discovered in January.
The bad news: Chrome is now an even bigger memory (RAM) hog than before. So if your …

View More Google Chrome’s new protection against Meltdown and Spectre bugs will slow your computer down

What do Meltdown, Spectre and RyzenFall mean for the future of cybersecurity?

The security community is still reeling from the discoveries of the Meltdown and Spectre computer vulnerabilities, and now it seems that a rash of new hardware vulnerabilities called MasterKey, RyzenFall, Fallout and Chimera have been found in the past few months too.

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Last march of the Penryns: Intel cuts Spectre fixes for some older chips

As part of its ongoing efforts to patch its systems against the Meltdown and Spectre chip flaws, Intel indicated last month that it would be issuing fixes as far back as 2005’s Yorkfield processors. But in a new guidance document the company announces that many of these older platforms will not receive fixes after all.

View More Last march of the Penryns: Intel cuts Spectre fixes for some older chips

Intel announces hardware fixes for Spectre and Meltdown on upcoming chips

When the Spectre and Meltdown bugs hit, it became clear that they wouldn’t be fixed with a few quick patches — the problem runs deeper than that. Fortunately, Intel has had plenty of time to work on it, and new chips coming out later this year will include improvements at the hardware/architecture level that protect against the flaws. Well, two out of three, anyway.

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Intel reportedly notified Chinese companies of chip security flaw before the U.S. government

 Intel is not having that great of year thus far in the face of a slew of information about security flaws in it hardware coming out — and you can add another new report from The Wall Street Journal today, which suggests that Intel didn’t immediately notify the U.S. government of the issues, to that list. The Journal is reporting that Intel notified some of its customers of the… Read More

View More Intel reportedly notified Chinese companies of chip security flaw before the U.S. government

Apple issues Meltdown fix for Macs running Sierra and El Capitan

 A wise person once said, “don’t upgrade to the latest OS X until it’s been patched a few times. And even then, sometimes it isn’t really worth it.” These words have inspired many to stay on older versions of the OS, though lately that meant remaining vulnerable to Meltdown while those on the latest version were protected. Fortunately Apple has brought old OSes… Read More

View More Apple issues Meltdown fix for Macs running Sierra and El Capitan

Linus Torvalds declares Intel fix for Meltdown/Spectre ‘complete and utter garbage’

 The always outspoken Linus Torvalds, best known for his continuing work on the innermost code of Linux systems, has harsh words to say and accusations to level against Intel. His evaluation of Intel’s latest proposed fix for the Meltdown/Spectre issue: “the patches are COMPLETE AND UTTER GARBAGE.” Read More

View More Linus Torvalds declares Intel fix for Meltdown/Spectre ‘complete and utter garbage’

ARM’s CEO Simon Segars on Spectre/Meltdown, IoT security and more

 This year’s CES happened in the shadow of the Spectre and Meltdown disclosures, and virtually every conversation at the show turned to this topic at some point. Because this was CES, we had the ability to talk to quite a few people who are close to this issue, including ARM CEO Simon Segars, who stopped by to talk about security and these recent disclosures and their mitigations. Read More

View More ARM’s CEO Simon Segars on Spectre/Meltdown, IoT security and more

Intel details performance hit for Meltdown fix on affected processors

 Now that the Meltdown and Spectre cats are out of the bag and patches are being issued left and right, the main question people have is: will this affect my everyday work? Intel’s latest performance metrics suggest that yes it might, but not too much — more so if, like me, you have an older processor. Read More

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Qualcomm president: Spectre/Meltdown are ‘not an area of concern for us’

 During a press conference at CES, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon announced a number of new partnerships and products. He also was asked about the Spectre/Meltdown security flaws that are haunting the chip industry. According to Amon, the impact on the mobile industry will probably not be very high because the fixes are already available and won’t have any major impact on performance. Read More

View More Qualcomm president: Spectre/Meltdown are ‘not an area of concern for us’