Windows, Linux, and macOS have received security patches, to protect users from issues related to Meltdown and Specter, from current processors that have recently come to light. These pieces modify the way in which the operating system handles the virtual memory of the processor. Since that is precisely where the problem lies.
Meltdown and Specter vulnerabilities affect all current processors
All modern processors are susceptible to Meltdown and Specter vulnerabilities
These security flaws have been called Meltdown and Specter. Both vulnerabilities take advantage of the fact that all current processors execute the instructions speculatively. That is, they assume that, for example, a given condition will be real and execute the corresponding instructions. If later it turns out that the statement was false. Also, the instructions executed speculatively are discarded as if they did not affect.
Although the discarded effects of this speculative execution do not alter the outcome of a program. Also, they do make changes to the lower level architectural features.
Meltdown is the problem that spurred the arrival of the operating system patches. This weakness uses speculative execution to filter kernel data to regular user programs. All modern processors, including those from Intel, AMD, and ARM, are speculating about access to memory, although Intel’s processors do this in a particularly aggressive way and therefore are the most vulnerable. Intel chips allow user programs to use kernel data speculatively and access verification occurs sometime after the instruction begins to run.
The owners of the AMD and ARM systems should not be at ease because of Specter.
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