What are Meltdown and Spectre Bugs?
Meltdown and Spectre are a new security flaw discovered which can exploit a device and leak any data stored in the memory. This leak could expose some of the most private and sensitive data of a user including personal pictures, videos and even passwords. Some researchers at Google Project Zero and Graz University of Technology in Austria first discovered this bug last year and reported it recently. Companies like Microsoft and Mozilla said that they are working on a patch to the operating system and browsers to protect their users.
Who is Affected?
Mostly Intel-based devices are affected because it supplies the processors to almost every computer in the world. The Meltdown bug is affecting nearly every processor which is made since the mid-1990s. Intel and Google both said that they are working on the issue and might release the fix for this bug next week. They further explained that the Spectre exploit is hard to fix but also hard to execute which doesn’t make it an immediate threat to consumers.
What Should You Do?
There are very limited things which you can take care of to get your devices protected from these bugs. Make sure to keep your operating system updated with the latest software updates. Google has said that the Android devices are protected if they have the most recent security patch installed on the smartphone. Mozilla is also implementing a short-term mitigation to disable some capabilities of the Firefox Browser.
