Researchers Discover Two Major Flaws in the World’s Computers

Researchers Discover Two Major Flaws in the World’s Computers
The two problems, called Meltdown and Spectre, could allow hackers to steal the entire memory contents of computers, including mobile devices, personal computers
and servers running in so-called cloud computer networks.
“What actually happens with these flaws is different
and what you do about them is different,” said Paul Kocher, a researcher who was an integral member of a team of researchers at big tech companies like Google and Rambus and in academia that discovered the flaws.
“Intel and other technology companies have been made aware of new security research describing software analysis methods that, when used for malicious purposes, have the potential to improperly gather sensitive data from computing devices
that are operating as designed,” the company said in a statement.
For now, computer security experts are using a patch, called Kaiser,
that was originally discovered by researchers at the Graz University of Technology in Austria to respond to a separate issue last year.
Spectre is a problem in the fundamental way processors are designed,
and the threat from Spectre is “going to live with us for decades,” said Mr. Kocher, the president and chief scientist at Cryptography Research, a division of Rambus.
SAN FRANCISCO — Computer security experts have discovered two major security flaws in the microprocessors inside nearly all of the world’s computers.
According to the researchers, the Meltdown flaw affects virtually every microprocessor made by Intel, which makes chips used in more than 90 percent of the computer servers
that underpin the internet and private business operations.