If you thought your MacBook or iPhone would be immune to the Meltdown and Spectre microprocessor flaws acknowledged earlier this week by Intel, you would be wrong.
The problems found in the chips could allow hackers to get access to passwords and other sensitive data stored on personal computers.
In a statement, released by Apple on Thursday, the company announced, "All Mac systems and iOS devices are affected."
The good news is that "there are no known exploits impacting customers at this time" and that a change could come soon, according to Apple. The company says it has "already released mitigations in iOS 11.2, macOS 10.13.2, and tvOS 11.2 to help defend against Meltdown. Apple Watch is not affected by Meltdown. In the coming days we plan to release mitigations in Safari to help defend against Spectre."
Even so, as Devin Coldewey reports for TechCrunch: "If you're wondering why people keep saying, 'mitigate' instead of 'fix' or 'counteract' or something, it's because Meltdown and Spectre take advantage of computing practices so basic that avoiding them is extremely difficult and complex. And new variants of attacks may very well circumvent the protections companies have put together during the last few months during which the exploits were kept secret. The mitigations and patches will probably multiply."