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Re: OT: in the news



Thanks Kari.  That's the sort of info I was looking for.  Most of my computers are 2005 to 2009 models, with contemporaneous CPUs (including a Xeon), except for a couple laptops that are older.  I'll read through the links being cited here.  An uber-techie I know has written that a lot is apt to depend on how exploitable a particular OS happens to be.  Some sources are saying that the expected or hoped-for patches will likely slow down a CPU by as much as a third, others are disputing this. 


   Jordan



From: Kari Eveli
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, January 4, 2018 10:55 PM
Subject: Re: OT: in the news

Hello Jordan,

It seems almost everything around now is affected. While it is too early
to say what measures would be appropriate medium term (scrapping your
current gear?), the threats that are most serious seem to be servers
running multiple virtualized web servers, etc. As of now, there is not
much one can do, except apply patches and OS updates if available and
take care of firewalls and virus protection, including those of virtual
machines connected to the net (XP mode in particular). It seems that
Xeon processors are vulnerable, which means that servers on a wide front
are open to attack. The problem with older processors is that Intel and
others will not necessarily provide support for 'obsolete' equipment
(older than five years), meaning that patches, if they appear at all,
will arrive very late.

Here is a list of affected processors:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3245508/components-processors/intel-responds-to-the-cpu-kernel-bug.html

Best regards,

Kari Eveli
LEXITEC Book Publishing (Finland)
lexitec@xxxxxxxx

*** Lexitec Online ***
Lexitec in English: http://www.lexitec.fi/english.html
Home page in Finnish: http://www.lexitec.fi/


> My immediate curiosity is: just *where* is the dividing line ?  If my
> computers are mainly of 2006 to 2009 model vintage, would this _not_
> affect me, so long as I am able to continue running those ?  It would be
> nice if there was some table listing CPUs that are affected, and those
> that aren't.
>
>
>    Jordan




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