How Meltdown and Spectre Make Your Computer Vulnerable
Another year, another security breach that could expose all of your information. Installing updates might be a good New Year's resolution. Check out the Crash Course Computer Science series...
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By now, you’ve probably heard about Spectre and Meltdown. And if you haven’t, they might sound like James Bond villains. But they’re actually serious security flaws in one of the key components of most computers, smartphones, and tablets. If you’ve been struggling to wrap your brain around what they are and how they might affect you, don’t worry — we’ve got you covered with the basics. [ INTRO ] Spectre and Meltdown are different flaws in central processing units, or CPUs. The CPU is like a control center and puts the “compute” in computer. Basically, it carries out instructions to make different programs work. These instructions can be things like simple math problems, or logic related calculations — like comparing two numbers to chec...
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By now, you’ve probably heard about Spectre and Meltdown. And if you haven’t, they might sound like James Bond villains. But they’re actually serious security flaws in one of the key components of most computers, smartphones, and tablets. If you’ve been struggling to wrap your brain around what they are and how they might affect you, don’t worry — we’ve got you covered with the basics. [ INTRO ] Spectre and Meltdown are different flaws in central processing units, or CPUs. The CPU is like a control center and puts the “compute” in computer. Basically, it carries out instructions to make different programs work. These instructions can be things like simple math problems, or logic related calculations — like comparing two numbers to chec...
