Vox: How faster computers gave us Meltdown and Spectre

"These industry-breaking computer security exploits affect nearly every computer ever built.
...
In the pursuit of faster computers, Intel and other computer processor manufacturers started implementing a design feature known as “speculative execution.” That enables a computer to make necessary calculations before the user needs them. The problem? That feature now has the potential to be exploited to reveal sensitive data. And to make matters worse, these flawed computer chips have been around since 1995…"
ChaosEnginesays...

Just for a little context... so far spectre and meltdown are proof of concept only. No-one has actually found any evidence of a real breach. Still pretty scary though.

That said, most people are probably still more at risk of standard human vector attacks than either of these.

So standard security advice applies. Make your passwords long.
"ThisIsMyReallyLongPasswordThatNooneWillGuess" is far better than "p4$$W0rd". Use a password manager so that each site you visit has a different, unique (and long) password.

And patch your devices.

ChaosEnginesays...

Fair enough, but the more passwords my squishy meat bag brain has to remember, the more likely I am to make them easier to guess.

On the other hand, if I only need one password, I can make it ridiculously long (favourite line from a song or poem or movie, for example).

An 8 character password with a mix of lower and upper case, numbers and let’s say 10 symbols (@&$!, etf) has (26+26+10+10)^8 possible combinations: ~ 722 trillion.

A ten character password of just letters has 52^10 possibile combinations: ~144555 trillion

longer is better than complicated

notarobotsaid:

Now I only have to guess one password.

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