Meltdown and Spectre are the latest named vulnerabilities to appear in the news and they are in fact very problematic because the attacks could be used to read system memory that *should* have been inaccessible. What happens is an attacker could steal sensitive information such as passwords or encryption keys from your computer’s memory. And because these flaws are in your computer’s chips, it’s not a problem that is particularly easy to properly fix without a hardware replacement.
The solution at this point besides replace your computers? Change the low-level software that speaks to the hardware. Since the hardware can no longer be trusted to do what they were supposed to be doing, the software will limit the capability.
The good news is that these flaws have been known about for months and there are already plans to release these patches with some including Microsoft already releasing server versions on January 3, 2018. The researchers who discovered the problems disclosed them to chip manufacturers and software vendors, who have been feverishly working on fixes. The bad news is that we are at the mercy of some of these companies but the goal is to release patches soon. If you are managing your own hardware, then you should make sure you are updating all items (Phones, routers, computers, etc.). If we are doing it for you, you are all set as OptfinITy will roll out the patches as they are available.
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