With the past week riddled with news of new Meltdown and Spectre bugs, which affect pretty much all computer processors to-date. The latest casualty is Apple, which has confirmed that all the devices it makes, including all Macs, iPhones and iPads are affected. The Watch was the only one not to be hit by Spectre and Meltdown security flaw.
As with others, expect a decent performance drop after Apple sends out the updates with the fix.
The Windows Security Update That Will Slow Down Your PCs is Rolling Out
Releasing Fixes ASAP
Apple is currently working to fix the issues as soon as possible. The latest 11.2 update for iOS, macOS 10.13.2 and tvOS 11.2 will offer fixes for the bug, which are the biggest news in tech right now.
While the Meltdown bug affects only Intel-made processors, Spectre potentially deems all processors made in the last two decades vulnerable. The vulnerabilities take advantage of a CPU performance feature called speculative execution, which speeds up processes by performing difference tasks at once.
AMD at a “Near Zero Risk”
According to AMD, their processors are at a “near zero” risk of being affected from Spectre. While also being immune to Meltdown due to architectural differences between Intel and AMD chips.
Apple will issue fixes for Safari, as the bugs need a web browser to make a hacking attempt on your device. It denies knowing of any exploits to have been made on any of its devices yet.
Google, for its part, has already addressed the issue in its latest Android update. Microsoft has also released updates for Windows 10 devices to patch things up.
Late to The Show
Apple’s statement comes after a full day of silence, while the rest of the industry hurried to issue press releases and tweets. Users should make sure they have the latest versions of MacOS/iOS/Windows/Android to be on the safe side.
Apple’s statement reads,
All Mac systems and iOS devices are affected, but there are no known exploits impacting customers at this time. Since exploiting many of these issues requires a malicious app to be loaded on your Mac or iOS device, we recommend downloading software only from trusted sources such as the App Store.
However, since the exploit makes hacking possible through mobile browsers, Apple reassurances aren’t going to help it until it updates the devices.
