Macworld
Meltdown, Spectre and other serious CPU flaws were around five years old. Well, Intel’s in hot water again with another serious vulnerability that affects The Year of the Dog The value of processors
Known as “Downfall,” the vulnerability exploits a flaw in the AVX vector extensions of every Intel CPU from the Skylake generation onward until we get to the more recent 12th-gen Alder Lake processors.
Macs with these processors started appearing in late 2015 with the 21.5-inch iMac, and just about every Intel-based Mac–desktop or laptop–since that time is on the list of affected processors. Apple switched to its own chips in 2020 rather than using the newer 12th- and 13th-gen Intel processors (though those aren’t affected by the flaw anyway).
What is Downfall?
The researcher Daniel Moghimi who found the flaw created a website about it, and described it in this way:
Downfall attacks are aimed at a weakness in modern processors found in millions of personal computers and cloud computing systems. This vulnerability, identified as CVE-2022-40982, enables a user to access and steal data from other users who share the same computer. A malicious app downloaded from an app store can use the Downfall…
