Red Hat is telling customers and concerned tech users about the recently discovered Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities.
“People are (rightly) concerned, and it’s of course very important to apply all of the necessary software updates that have been carefully produced and made available. Technology leaders, including Red Hat, are working together to address these exploits and minimize the risk of potential attacks.,” the company said in a blog post.
“While we have a solid understanding of these vulnerabilities and the current analysis of the contributing factors as well as patches to mitigate their potential impact, we will continue to collaborate with our partners, customers and researchers on this situation.”
Red Hat and others are offering updates on the situation as Apple and Intel report progress to protect their hardware and chips.
Red Hat offers more details in the blog about what to do.
In a video, Red Hat says it explains Meltdown and Spectre “in 3 minutes:”
Meanwhile, news site CRN has contacted a number of tech vendors about their efforts to combat the Spctre and Meltdown threats.
IBM reports in a blog post that its POWER-based servers and System z mainframes will have patches available soon even though it says its hardware has not been affected,
“The most immediate action clients can take to protect themselves is to prevent execution of unauthorized software on any system that handles sensitive data, including adjacent virtual machines,” IBM wrote.
In an email, Lenovo told CRN:
“Lenovo has assessed its storage portfolio for affected CPUs and will release UEFI firmware updates incorporating Intel CPU microcode fixes for affected CPUs as they are available from Intel. Lenovo is also evaluating Operating System updates for incorporation into supported storage products, where appropriate.”
NetApp, Dell and HP Enterprise also offered updates, as CRN reports.
