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Thanks to an enormous security flaw, almost all the computer processors in the world are vulnerable to attack. Problems with processors built by Intel, AMD, and ARM are letting attackers access areas of your computer’s memory that ought to be secure. Fixing this problem could lead to slowdowns of up to 30 per cent. But don’t panic just yet – with a few updates, your computer should be just fine.
The bugs are called Meltdown and Spectre, and they exploit a process called “speculative execution”. This step allows a processor to predict what tasks it will have to execute and fetch the data that it will need ahead of time, speeding up tasks on your computer.
This can leave ostensibly secure data unprotected and allow programs to access the computer’s kernel, which has control over the whole system, without the