Radio 4: The World at One (Item)

Meltdown and Spectre Chip Flaws

Radio 4 Series 1 Episode 1
First broadcast 5th January 2018, 13:20
Duration: 06:18
It emerged this week that tech companies have been racing to fix the Meltdown and Spectre bugs, that could allow hackers to steal data. Billions of PCs, smartphones and tablets around the world are affected - Apple has now confirmed its products are too.

Clips from this programme

Tech companies have been racing to fix the Meltdown and Spectre flaws in chips, that could allow hackers to steal data, Intel share sales & values (BBC business correspondent, Joe Lynam ), Google developers (Jann Horn) discovered the issues that affects ARM holdings, PC, Intel & Apple products.

Duration: 02:51

Patches to fix the chip flaws called Meltdown and Spectre are being released ( University in Graz, Austria, Daniel Gross) but the bugs were big security flaws, anything in the computer's memory (e.g. passwords) could be accessed since at least 1995. The patches will slow some features on some computers

Duration: 03:27