Security In Five Podcast Weekly Roundup – 1/12/18

It’s been a wild week in the security world. Two major vulnerabilities were announced and sent the world scrambling to fix it. Meltdown and Spectre are vulnerabilities that impact the hardware level, specifically the brains of a computer, the processor. These are particularly scary that it doesn’t matter how secure the installed operating system and applications are, a little bit of code could get the processor to get the software to leak secrets and data without any knowledge from the software. Meltdown is easily patched but Spectre is more complicated and patching may not be effective. In fact, CERT released a recommendation that if you want to be 100% protected from these the only solution is to replace the hardware. They have since walked back from that recommendation but it’s still a powerful message.

Meltdown and Spectre have one thing going for it that’s a good thing to all of us. These are not remotely exploitable. That means that the computers need to have malware on the machine to exploit these processor vulnerabilities. That means for us protecting ourselves is maintaining good Internet security practices. Be careful of emails you get, websites you visit, software you install and attachments you receive. The same practices you follow to keep ransomware off your computers, same exactly practices will help protect you from these. That and patch early and often.

Shifting gears back to the podcast, here are the episodes for the week ending 1/12/18 –

Be aware, be safe.

End of line.

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