Added 1 new A* page:Regarding my blog yesterday about my PC being too old for newly uncovered CPU vulnerabilities, reader Walter Milliken rightly pointed out to me that my old Windows XP OS is nevertheless not the most secure these days, since Microsoft no longer supports it—and that I should change antivirus programs, since the one I've been using, having dropped its XP support, will no longer receive program updates. He also pointed me to this Ars Technica article, which does a great job of describing what the Meltdown and Spectre CPU vulnerabilities are. As to the threat they pose,
| "The most vulnerable users are probably cloud service providers; Meltdown and Spectre can both in principle be used to further attacks against hypervisors, making it easier for malicious users to break out of their virtual machines. For typical desktop users, the risk is arguably less significant. While both Meltdown and Spectre can have value in expanding the scope of an existing flaw, neither one is sufficient on its own to, for example, break out of a Web browser." |
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And thanks to readers for keeping this comic clicking along by supporting my work on it directly through the A* Patreon campaign! : D They can get themselves little monthly rewards in the process; for instance, here's a sketch I sent to a reader for their support:
Thank you very much! : D I couldn't make this comic without you!
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