Apple Inc is to release a patch for the Safari Web browser on its iPhones, iPads and Macs within days, it said on Thursday, after major chipmakers disclosed flaws that leave nearly every modern computing device vulnerable to hackers.
On Wednesday, Alphabet Inc’s Google and other security researchers disclosed two major chip flaws, one called “Meltdown” affecting only Intel Corp chips and one called “Spectre” affecting nearly all computer chips made in the past decade.
The news sparked a sell-off in Intel’s stock as investors tried to gauge the costs to the chipmaker.
In a statement on its Web site, Apple said all Mac and iOS devices are affected by both Meltdown and Spectre, but added that the most recent operating system updates for Mac computers, Apple TVs, iPhones and iPads protect users against the Meltdown attack and do not slow down the devices, and Meltdown does not affect the Apple Watch.
As Macs and iOS devices are vulnerable to Spectre attacks through code that can run in Web browsers, Apple said it would issue a patch to its Safari browser for those devices “in the coming days.”
Shortly after the researchers disclosed the chip flaws on Wednesday, Google and Microsoft Corp released statements telling users which of their products were affected.
Google said users of Android smartphones — more than 80 percent of the global market — were protected if they had the latest security updates.
Apple remained silent for more than a day about the fate of the hundreds of millions of users of its iPhones and iPads.
Ben Johnson, cofounder and chief strategist for cybersecurity firm Carbon Black, said the delay in updating customers about whether Apple’s devices are at risk could affect Apple’s drive to get more business clients to adopt its hardware.
“Something this severe gets the attention of all the employees and executives at a company, and when they go asking the IT [information technology] and security people about it and security doesn’t have an answer for iPhones and iPads, it just doesn’t give a whole lot of confidence,” Johnson said.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
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