Timeline Tuesday 3 January 2017

Events on Tuesday 3 January 2017 1

• 2017 Meltdown and Spectre — fundamental CPU vulnerabilities Researchers reveal Meltdown and Spectre in January 2018 — fundamental security vulnerabilities in the speculative execution mechanisms used by virtually all modern processors, including Intel's. Meltdown is primarily an Intel problem; Spectre affects nearly all processor architectures. Patches for Meltdown reduce performance by up to 30% on some workloads. The vulnerabilities, present in processors manufactured since 1995, cannot be fully fixed in hardware without redesigning the processors. Intel faces class-action lawsuits and the revelation that its processors' security model is fundamentally flawed.