Ever since the ground shattering revelation that microprocessor chip manufacturers sold the world compromised chips with built-in flaws, all chip users are now scrambling to protect their customers from the various hacks and cracks that will follow the revelation, as we reported earlier today. Just like telling someone they have a life-threatening illness with no known cure, so has the microchip industry just revealed that all data security is irrelevant due to architectural flaws in their processors.
Since end users do not buy microprocessors, they buy products that include these chips in them, the brunt of the fight to correct the situation will be met by the product manufacturers.
Apple is one such company, and they have already told us that all Mac systems andiOS devices include these chips in them. In their official announcement on Thursday, Apple stated that they would release security updates to all iOS 11.2, macOS 10.12.2 and tvOS 11.2 devices to counter the possibility of Meltdown or Spectre attacks.
Apple told us that at the moment, there are no known attacks reported, but they have no intention of waiting. The recent revelation tells the world that all computers that have Intel, AMD or Arm chips are susceptible to attack. Since the problem is a physical flaw in the design of the processor, the only way to counter the issue until a replacement chip becomes available is to create the necessary code that can counter-attack. The way an attack happens is in the processing queue, where the chip allows information to be exposed while waiting in a queue for a “speculative execution” process.
Speculative execution is a technique used to optimize a task that may not be needed. The concept is a risk management algorithm that prefers to perform a task before it is known whether that task will be needed at all, which is to prevent a delay that would be incurred by performing the task after it is known to be needed.
Apple will release their updates within a few days.