More Product Woes For Apple iPhone & Macs Affected
Days after they admitted nobbling iPhone 7 batteries Apple has admitted that their iPhones, iPads and Mac PC’s are now vulnerable to an outright security attack.
The US Company who are facing problems on several fronts has been forced to issue a statement confirming a software updates for two serious Meltdown and Spectre flaws in processors that allow for easy access to data.
The flaws were disclosed this week by a security group associated with Google and by various researchers, and take advantage of a feature in chips built by Intel and ARM designed to improve performance.
The feature allows the processor to operate on multiple instructions at once, and is supposed to be invisible to software.
The flaws show that this is not the case, potentially allowing ordinary apps to peer deep into the processor and grab information — from web addresses to passwords — as it moves through.
Apple said on its website that an update will be rolled out “in the coming days” that is meant to counter two exploitation techniques known collectively as the “Spectre” vulnerabilities, which was previously believed to only affect Intel chips.
The vulnerabilities could potentially allow JavaScript running on websites to access sensitive information on computer systems without permission by taking advantage of the time it takes an operating system to run a permissions check for a memory access call, according to the statement.
Microsoft is rolling out an emergency security update for Windows devices, with Intel claiming that any slowdown because of the fixes will be “workload dependant”. Tech sites including The Verge and The Register, citing experts and independent tests, suggest older PCs will be more likely to slow down as a result of the fixes.
