Richard Beck | 5 January 2018
The Meltdown & Spectre exploits were discovered by Google, which warns that an attacker could use them to steal sensitive or confidential information, including passwords. The first wave of patches has already started to go out for Microsoft's Windows 10, Apple's MacOS, Linux, Android. The most immediate consequence of all of this will come from applying the security patches. Some devices will see a performance dip, but do not let that put you of applying the patch.
Meltdown (CVE-2017-5754)
Meltdown impacts the isolation between user applications and the operating system. This exploit allows a program to access the memory, and the isolated 'secrets', of other applications and fundamentally the operating system.
If you have a vulnerable processor and run an unpatched operating system, sensitive information could be exposed. This applies to home, business as well as cloud infrastructure services.
Spectre (CVE-2017-5753 and CVE-2017-5715)
Spectre impacts the isolation between different applications. It exploits the error-free application best practice process, into leaking their secrets. Spectre is harder to exploit than Meltdown and harder to mitigate. However, it is possible to prevent specific known exploits based on Spectre through software patches.
Q & A
Am I affected by these vulnerabilities?
Can I detect Meltdown or Spectre exploitation?
Can my antivirus detect or block this attack?
What can be leaked?
Are there any known instances of Meltdown or Spectre in the wild outside of the research community?
Is there a workaround/fix?
Which systems are affected by Meltdown?
Which systems are affected by Spectre?
Which cloud providers are affected by Meltdown?
What is the difference between Meltdown and Spectre?
Why is it called Meltdown?
Why is it called Spectre?
Vendor Patch Guidance
Intel
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Microsoft
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Amazon
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ARM
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Mitre
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CVE-2017-5715 / CVE-2017-5753 / CVE-2017-5754
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Red Hat
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Suse
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Apple
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More information
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