Spectre and Meltdown, not on my Pis!
OK so its big news that there are significant security flaws in many Intel, AMD and ARM computer chips have been found. Operating systems are being updated, but as the flaws are hardware based, some of the solutions may be harder to find. Basically, data residing in the memory that should only be available to the CPU, can potentially be accessed by unauthorised programs, if that unauthorised program is from an attacker, they could see any kind of data like encryption keys or passwords.
I use my Raspberry Pi 2 & 3 to stake my cryptocurrencies, so I was keen to checkout what ARM chips were impacted, here is the list:
https://developer.arm.com/support/security-update
The Raspberry Pi 3 uses a Cortex A53 chip, so its probably not vunerable.
The Raspberry Pi 2 uses a Cortex A7 chip, so its probably not vunerable either.
If anyone considers my analysis to be incorrect, please advise.
Its advisable to always secure your devices where your cryptocurrency wallets are held.
Stay safe!
That's kind of normal to expect. Out of order execution, which is at the core of the issue, is normally not used in embedded processors because it means more power hungry, more complex and more pricey cores.
It's kind of funny that the embedded devices such as the Pis are not involved because they are cheap.
The major part of our devices are iMX6 and are good, our current prototypes are iMX8 and we're judging the impact. Embedded OSs won't be updated as fast but won't be attacked as fast either.
As always, dont make things more complicated than they need to be :)