Why are Spectre and Meltdown So Dangerous?

Spectre and Meltdown are security flaws that, between them, affect nearly all of the world's PCs and smartphones! How did this happen, and what makes these bugs so sinister?





Intro Theme: Showdown by F.O.O.L from Monstercat - Best of 2016

[stfloorguy]

It's a good thing my bank account is always empty

[pmmojkristoferromanvilla]

TechQuickie: “These affect almost every Intel CPU”
Me at around 1:00 : “ah good thing I use AMD”
TechQuickie 5 seconds later: “It also affects AMD CPUs”
Me:

[tonydas]

Why do vulnerabilities always get such cool names?

[RmwPathricc]

Meltdown and Spectre can also attack your phone processor
Me : *laugh in nokia 3310*

[Matthigast]

You didn't give enough ram to chrome, ffs Linus!

[moth.monster]

Wow, someone finally actually explained what the fucking bugs do. Thank you. I was getting tired of people just saying "Oh it's bad" and not actually caring about what it really does

[AlexanderPavel]

One important thing that was not mentioned: Meltdown (Intel specific) allows a program to read memory from anywhere on the CPU, included protected system memory. The 2 main spectre vulnerabilities can only read from the currently executing program or another program running in userspace (not system).

[lbsiuk]

Fun fact!: Early Intel Atom processors (the ones in netbooks from 2008-2010, like the n270 and n450) don't support speculative execution and therefore aren't vulnerable to Spectre/Meltdown.

[PedroOjeda]

This was probably the best Techquickie video. I actually learned something instead of just getting a lot superficial knowledge

[sidewinder]

As I expected Modern Technology is dangerous, nothing beats my old but realiable Abacus

[undertaker]

2:30 Google Chrome is inacurate it needs like THE WHOLE DAM BAR!

[cedricvelarde]

CPU: I can predict your next move.
Spectre, Meltdown: Omae wa mou shindeiru


CPU: *NANI?!*

[herrreinsch]

*4:26** the barking cpu, I'm dead.* 😂

[petarpartaloski]

As a guy who just had a subject dedicated to building processors from scratch, all of these terms seem very familiar to me, and I loved how well described the problems are in this video, just as always, Techquickie delivers!

[nicolasmunoz]

The whole schematic to explain the vulnerabilities is very well put together. Nice work!

[Robo]

This is one of the best readers digest explanations of the Spectre and Meltdown exploits I've seen so far. Bravo, Linus and the Techquickie team!

[JorgetePanete]

So, the CPUs are like:
"Your next line will be..."

[musmuk]

There's a hole in your T-shirt Linus :/

[rustyshackleford]

6:01 Speaking of plugging bear!! Wanna plug the holes where your ISP can peek at your data? Use a vpn to plug your data holes.

LMAO!

[Twatical]

Checked my steam like 10 times whilst watching this video