On Thursday, Apple stated that it will be releasing additional software updates to defend against the latest security vulnerabilities.
This would be the first time the company had issued a formal statement pertaining to the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, which are stated to affect servers, PCs and phone.
According to Apple, the latest updates to its macOS, tvOS and iOS systems are equipped with protection against the Meltdown issue, which has been determined to have affected multiple Intel chips. Apple also added that their product Apple Watch did not need any software updates.
More chips are affected by the Spectre vulnerability including Arm processors which are used in iPads and iPhones. According to a new support page on Apple’s website, this vulnerability is exceptionally hard to exploit.
Nevertheless, the company is starting to release updates to its browser, Safari, for the macOS and iOS to prepare for a security flaw known as the Spectre in the future, Apple also added that these steps may cause the browser’s speed to drop by less than 2.5 percent.
In spite of concerns from users expecting that the recent updates may slow devices down, the company stated that the steps taken to counter the Meltdown issue have not compromised device performance.
The Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities exploits a modern CPU’s speculative execution. These security flaws exploits speculative execution to gain passage from a less privileged user process like malicious apps that is running on a device to a privileged memory.