Meltdown & Spectre Information and Discussion

[ian_r_h]

OK.

I've had a few minutes to research this further, since coming to it myself first time first thing this morning.

There are two bugs reported:  MELTDOWN and SPECTRE.  According to Wikipedia:-

"The Meltdown vulnerability can be thought of as a particularly easy and efficient-to-implement special case of Spectre."  Note that there is no citation and it is reported as needing one; indeed citation is lacking in the Spectre entry at this time.

"Two Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures IDs related to Spectre, CVE-2017-5753 and CVE-2017-5715, have been issued."

Spectre affects Intel, AMD and ARM processors.

"[Meltdown] was issued a Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures ID of CVE-2017-5754."

Meltdown affects Intel processors and "does not seem to affect AMD microprocessors".

The Wikipedia entries are at:-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(s...erability)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltdown_(...erability)

There is a website for Meltdown and Spectre (which both Wikipedia articles label as the "official website") at:

https://meltdownattack.com/

Hope this helps, though I'm still reading up on it at the moment.