AMD Releases Linux and Windows Patches for Two Variants of Spectre Vulnerability

Last week, several security researchers from Google Project Zero, Graz University of Technology, Cyberus Technology, and others, have publicly disclosed what it would appear to be the worse chip flaws in the history of computing. Dubbed Meltdown and Spectre, these critical security vulnerabilities affect billions of devices by allowing unprivileged attackers to steal sensitive data from memory. According to Mark Papermaster, the Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at AMD, the company is working closely with both the Linux community and Microsoft to distribute their patches in a timely manner not to cause any boot failures or other issues on users’ computers. The patches releases by AMD today are for two variants of the Spectre vulnerability, as the processors appear to be immune to the Meltdown exploit.