It seems we are sending these emails much too often these days, but yet another set of vulnerabilities have been found affecting basically every computer out there from Windows to Apple to Linux, as these particular vulnerabilities target the CPU or “brain” of your computer. These vulnerabilities have been reported in the mainstream media as “Meltdown” and “Spectre”

Microsoft released patches for Meltdown yesterday. We are in the process of rolling these out to our internal systems as we speak. If all goes well with our systems we will be rolling out the patches to all of our CompleteCare or other managed patching clients in the next couple of days.

As for Spectre, this one is a hardware vulnerability which is a lot harder to fix than a software patch, we await further information from Intel and other CPU manufacturers on how they will be addressing this issue and we will let you know more as further information becomes available.

Here are a couple of articles if you would like to know more:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3245606/security/intel-x86-cpu-kernel-bug-faq-how-it-affects-pc-mac.html
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/security-flaws-put-virtually-all-phones-computers-at-risk/ar-BBHQ0UL?li=BBnbcA1

More technical details about the vulnerability can be found at https://spectreattack.com .

This is yet another reminder to be extremely vigilant about what links you click on, in social media and in banner ads on websites especially.

Even if you get an email with a link or attachment from someone that you know, if you were not expecting it, contact that person and make sure it was sent by them. Many of these attacks utilize software that will attempt to impersonate an email user and send an email to everyone in their contact list.

As always thanks for choosing Weston and Happy New Year!

Eric Spinney
Service Manager
Weston Technology Solutions