CPU

Meltdown primarily affects Intel processors and is (relatively) easy to patch. To add fuel to the fire, Intel’s response to the flaw has drawn sharp criticism from the security industry. Spectre has the potential to affect almost every modern processor across all manufacturers and will be the more challenging of the two exploits in the long term. However, to get a sense of how severe these two flaws are, and how they affect you, we first need to take a look at how a CPU works.