Security flaws have been found in Intel, AMD and ARM processors, requiring fixes within Linux, macOS, and Windows.

It is feared that the security flaws named Meltdown and Specture are being used to access passwords, login details, and other private information.

“Meltdown is probably one of the worst CPU bugs ever found”, said Daniel Gruss, researcher at Graz University of Technology who discovered the flaw, according to The Guardian. 

The memory operating systems must be moved from “normal programmes” in order to gain access to “protected memory”.

‘Restarting thousands of computers’

Security expert, Graham Cluey, continued: “Modern operating systems rely upon Intel’s chips to provide some essential security services – but if a flaw has been found then the operating systems themselves will need to be updated to do the job that they believed Intel’s chips were doing properly.

“The good news is that it sounds as if this flaw has been known about (but kept quiet) for a couple of months. The bad news is that users will once again have to install a security update, and businesses are likely to have to restart thousands of computers to apply the fixes.”

Despite this, the fix could damage the computer’s speed, making it 30% slower.

Written by Leah Alger