Deerfield-News.com-Deerfield Beach,Fl-Two scary-sounding words for two scary computer viruses that Reuters reports could potentially compromise the computer chip in just about every desktop, laptop, smart phone, and tablet out there.The flaws may let hackers steal very sensitive information from nearly every modern computing device containing chips from Intel Corp, Advanced Micro Devices Inc and ARM Holdings.
Computer safety experts Norton are advising the following information about Spectre and Meltdown.
Recently, two critical vulnerabilities were discovered in modern processors1. Dubbed “Meltdown and Spectre”, these processor chip vulnerabilities are found on personal computers, mobile devices, and in the cloud.
These hardware vulnerabilities can potentially allow programs to steal data which is currently being processed on the computers’ chip. While programs are typically not permitted to read data from other programs, a malicious program can exploit Meltdown and Spectre to get hold of secrets stored in the memory of other running programs. This might include passwords stored in a password manager or browser, personal photos, emails, instant messages and even documents containing personal information. Click here to learn more.
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Norton can help users protect against some instances of this threat. If you run into any issues installing patches, you should make sure your Norton product definitions are up to date first, then apply operating system patches immediately afterwards. Patches have already been released for Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS, and Linux to patch Meltdown.
