[The Exiled]

• Microsoft Releases Emergency Updates to Fix Meltdown and Spectre CPU Flaws
  
  
• List of Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerability Advisories, Patches, & Updates
  
  
• Google: Almost All CPUs Since 1995 Vulnerable To "Meltdown" And "Spectre" Flaws
  
  
• Intel Denies Reports of Huge Performance Dip Due to Patches for CPU Security Bug

• Meltdown breaks the most fundamental isolation between user applications and the operating system. This attack allows a program to access the memory, and thus also the secrets, of other programs and the operating system.
  
  
• Spectre breaks the isolation between different applications. It allows an attacker to trick error-free programs, which follow best practices, into leaking their secrets.

Google says it verified Meltdown only against Intel CPUs, but not ARM and AMD. Nonetheless, Intel has a market share of than 80% on desktops and more than 90% on the laptop and server markets, meaning that a large number of desktops, laptops, and servers are affected. Google says that they've tested and verified Spectre against Intel, AMD, and ARM processors, and the attack affects desktops, laptops, cloud servers, and smartphones. The attack is also believed to affect almost all CPUs released in recent years.