Total Computer Destruction: The Meltdown of Spectre - URGENT

By now you have heard about the earthquake just south of Berkeley, California. This blog post has nothing to do with it, other than to wish residents well.

Just discovered are two majorly serious bugs with Intel CPUs. Since Intel isn't going to issue replacement CPUs (the main computer chip), fixes must be made in software(s). I'd be pissed too.

Warning: This is Major Shit

I'm not going into what exactly happened, whose fault it was (rhymes with Schwintel), and who discovered them. You don't care. I don't understand it. The important part is that it's being fixed, hopefully rapidly.

WINDOWS

You're in luck. Microsoft has issued a patch.
Whether or not you received the patch depends on your update settings. I believe the default is to download and apply patches automatically, so if you haven't changed that setting, you should be ok. If you have changed that setting, initiate "Looking for Patch" sequence (force it to update).

You may take a performance hit with this update. Tough luck.

WINDOWS SERVER

Microsoft patch is  out but your AV vendor has to set a special key.

Here's a powershell tool to check whether the system has been patched. If you don't know what powershell is, you never read this and I was never here.

Symantec Endpoint customers: if you install the MS patches you may experience BSODs currently. Do not manually push patch or make registry key for it, Engine update tomorrow to fix.

LINUX 

Check for the patch.

MAC

There is a patch. I can't tell you much more than that. Check on Duckduckgo.com (instead of Google, which tracks you).

CHROME

Read this article for information on Chrome and Chromium browsers, as well as browsers built on Chrome.

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Just for fun, here's the rest of today's exciting IT news...


There is simply no excuse not to be using a password manager. Do NOT have your browser remember your login and password. Do not write them on a sticky and put it under your keyboard, on in a little spiral notebook, or on a piece of paper push pinned to the noteboard in your kitchen.

Symantec has discovered Android malware that steals Uber credentials and covers it up with the use of deep links.

Fake android security tool on Google Play bombard users with ads and track location.

Hundreds of GPS location tracking services leave user data open to hackers. Trackmageddon (I did not make that up). Stop using location tracking.

247,000 DHS employees are affected by a data breach. These are the people and this is the infrastructure keeping us 'safe'.


In more social news....

Artificial intelligence pilot program will listen to social media for suicidal or self-harm thoughts. This comes from Canada, and is both interesting and frightening. This same technology will be used to monitor all sorts of information once it gets out. Marketers will love this to death.

Over in England, where things are getting weird(er), a person who named and shamed two rape victims was charged with two counts of publishing names of sexual assault victims and two counts of harassment. She was jailed and is now out on bail. Publishing names has been illegal since 2003 and is illegal in other countries too.

At times like these, I truly appreciate being an American, because we have a First Amendment. People in England are being penalized for saying words online. If you call someone a name, or heaven forbid, disparage their race or country of origin, that's also illegal. You simply may not offend anybody. It's creepy. This is also the country with one public spy camera per sixteen citizens. Although the US has a Fourth Amendment, cameras are starting to proliferate. Bad Things<tm> tend to get tested and established in Australia and England before they infect the rest of the world.

Offline, as if there is such a thing, finds police arresting people for public disturbance. Public Disturbance seems to encompass anything the policeman doesn't like at the moment, particularly cursing. We can all be glad that this is one of their most serious crimes. Also covered is being drunk, yelling, and calling the police names.

This is abhorrent to US citizens (but only if they find out because the Kardashians mention it or football players protest it).

We might not like what you say, but support your right to say it.