Major flaw in millions of Intel chips -- (Spectre & Meltdown)

[Corrine]

Academics and private sector researchers have revealed details today about three new vulnerabilities affecting Intel CPUs.

All three are Spectre-class attacks that take advantage of a CPU design feature named speculative execution —a feature found in all modern CPUs that has the role of improving performance by computing operations in advance and later discarding unneeded data.

Note:  Only Intel CPUs are affected.  See Researchers Disclose New Foreshadow (L1TF) Vulnerabilities Affecting Intel CPUs for additional information.

[Corrine]

From Microsoft Security Advisory Notification:

Microsoft is announcing the availability of
   Intel-validated microcode updates for Windows 10 operating
   systems. Please see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 4093836
   (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4093836) for the
   current Intel microcode updates.
- Originally posted: August 14, 2018
- Updated: August 24, 2018
- Version: 2.0