The Latest on the Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerabilities

The Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities continue to gain a lot of attention in the tech industry. Today’s reports are stating that researchers are closer to finding a useful attack to the Meltdown vulnerability. That means if researchers are close to finding a way to exploit the vulnerability for an attack, so could would be hackers. 

Another unfortunate update from the tech industry is that the updates continue to be buggy. Performance issues and random reboots are just the beginning of the issues running rampant as companies scurry to fix these major vulnerabilities. We are now learning that users with outdated or expired anti-virus software may not receive the patch at all. 

Virtually all anti-virus vendors have updated their software to allow the Meltdown and Spectre patches to be installed.  This means as long as your anti-virus is still within it’s current subscription period and receiving updates, your device should be able to receive the updates. Of course, making sure your anti-virus is valid and up to date is everyone’s priority, right? Unfortunately in today’s connected world and with more and more news of cyber security threats, folks are still browsing the internet with little or no anti-virus protection. Get up to date today, keep up on your patches, and cognizant while online. What are you waiting for, your data to be compromised? Don’t be that person.