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Apple says Meltdown and Spectre flaws affect all Mac and iOS devices

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Apple’s iPhones, iPads and Mac computers are typical liable to the foremost processor flaws revealed on Wednesday, this company has warned, however it says updates have already been available.

The flaws called Meltdown and Spectre affect every modern computing device all manufacturers using chip designs from Intel, AMD and ARM. Apple uses Intel processors in its Mac computers and ARM-based designs to its A-series processors used in the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Apple Watch lines.

Apple said: “All Mac systems and iOS products are affected, but there are no known exploits impacting customers right now.”

The company advised people to download software only from trusted sources just like its iOS and Mac App Stores to aid prevent hackers from the ability to makes use of the processor vulnerabilities.

In an assistance document, Apple declared iOS 11.2 released on 13 December, macOS 10.13.2 released on 6 December and tvOS 11.2 released on 4 December all drive back Meltdown for supported devices which WatchOS would not need updating.

Apple claimed it was developing protections about the Spectre flaw because of its Safari browser for iOS and macOS, and would release them inside coming days that will help stop potential exploitation via JavaScript running in the browser coming from a website.

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Apple said: “Our current testing shows that the upcoming Safari mitigations will have no measurable affect the Speedometer and ARES-6 tests and a impact of a lot less than 2.5% on the JetStream benchmark.”

Users of Apple products are urged to update their devices with all the latest software whether they have had not already. iOS 11.2 props up the iPhone 5S and newer, iPad Air and newer plus the sixth generation iPhone Touch. MacOS 10.13.2 props up iMac and MacBook from late 2009 or newer, the MacBook Pro, Mac Mini and Mac Pro from mid-2010 or newer as well as MacBook Air from late 2010 or newer.

The Meltdown and Spectre flaws were found by security researchers at Google’s Project Zero along side academic and industry researchers between several countries. Information of the flaws were reported in June but wasn’t published until this week as developers scrambled behind the scenes to make fixes for the flaws preventing their malicious use.