Recently, a massive security exploit had come into the spotlight which affects a wide range of hardware including servers, computers, smartphones and tablets. In a nutshell, the two vulnerabilities named Meltdown and Specture takes advantage of a CPU’s performance feature to gain access to your private data from your system’s memory.
To reduce the risk of such vulnerability, Apple has finally issued an update which covers iOS, macOS and tvOS.
According to Apple, they have mitigated Meltdown in the previous iOS 11.2, macOS 10.13.2 and tvOS 11.2 updates and now they are addressing Spectre with the latest iOS 11.2.2, macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 Supplementary Update, and Safari 11.0.2 for macOS Sierra and OS X El Capitan.
In case you’re wondering, Apple Watch is not affected by either Meltdown or Spectre. The latest updates are available now and it is recommended that you install them on your iPhone, iPad, Macs and Apple TV as soon as possible.
As always, it is recommended that you only install apps from trusted sources like the AppStore to avoid potential exploits from malicious apps. While the latest updates reduce the risk of Meltdown and Spectre, Apple will still continue to develop and test further mitigations and will release them in future updates.
If you’re worried about slower performance, Apple had run a few tests on their Spectre mitigation and they have found no measurable impact on Speedometer and ARES-6 tests. They added that it gets an impact of less than 2.5% on JetStream benchmark, which should be negligible.
