14 DAY TRIAL // Oracle is the most recent company to release patches addressing the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, with the January 16 rollout bringing a total of 237 security fixes for various products.
While there are no known exploits for the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, Oracle emphasizes that these patches should be deployed as soon as possible, especially because they include fixes for other security flaws as well.
“Due to the threat posed by a successful attack, Oracle strongly recommends that customers apply Critical Patch Update fixes as soon as possible. Until you apply the Critical Patch Update fixes, it may be possible to reduce the risk of successful attack by blocking network protocols required by an attack,” the firm says.
“For attacks that require certain privileges or access to certain packages, removing the privileges or the ability to access the packages from users that do not need the privileges may help reduce the risk of successful attack. Both approaches may break application functionality, so Oracle strongly recommends that customers test changes on non-production systems. Neither approach should be considered a long-term solution as neither corrects the underlying problem.”
The full list of products getting patched as part of the January 2018 rollout can be accessed in the photo gallery below and head over to this link to download the updates.
Meltdown and Spectre updates
Intel applauded the entire industry for the way it responded to the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, as the majority of companies released updates shortly after the public disclosure took place in early January.
Microsoft itself shipped its own set of patches for Windows users via Windows Update, followed by other firmware updates for various devices that were automatically shipped to customers using the same method.
Apple and Google have also released updates for their devices, with the latter saying that as compared to the other rollouts, its patches aren’t causing a performance slowdown on its devices. Microsoft confirmed that Meltdown and Spectre updates impact performance of Windows devices.
