Why your website may experience unexpected downtime & the importance of keeping your computer up-to-date

Posted on Jan 11, 2018

by Shauna Millar

The Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities are all over the news. You may be wondering how they apply to you and your business. First, let us address what these issues are, so you can better understand what is going on.

It was recently announced that several processors have a hardware vulnerability; including Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and ARM – this problem allows other programs to access information that they aren’t supposed to be able to access. Getting the information is only part of the issue it is what can be done with it that has raised concern to new levels. Meltdown exploits CPU (the brain of your computer) optimization in some arbitrary kernel memory locations. This means it doesn’t need software to be installed to do the damage – as it is a hardware problem. OS manufacturers such as Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon and the Linux Project are all working on software fixes. There is no way to “fix” the CPU except to replace it. Since the CPU chips affected go as far back as 1995 protective workarounds are currently going on. So, keeping your computer up-to-date should be a priority. This will help protect and prevent issues with your computer. (Protective updates are already rolling out.)

Spectre is a vulnerability that exploits performance in modern CPUs. This means, that when the updates roll out, you may or may not notice a system slowdown depending on what type of work you use your computer for.

Another important thing to know is that just like you need to update your computer to protect it, the servers your website run on will need to be updated as well. This means there may be some noticeable downtime while they work to patch the problems. This downtime is not something that we can control. We want to let all of our clients know that it is happening. You may or may not notice the transition – and it will be happening with various systems throughout the following months as the initial patches may need to be updated.

Please note: This is not just happening with your computer or with the servers that host websites, it is happening to all computers that use these chips. Therefore, you may notice downtimes in other companies as well. We have listed various sites you can go to in order to read more about these vulnerabilities and/or you can do searches to find more information. As updates are happening, there are articles being written in order to address the issues and keep the public informed.