Meltdown and Spectre: ‘worst ever’ CPU bugs affect virtually all computers

Everything from smartphones and PCs to cloud computing affected by major security flaw found in Intel and other processors - and fix could slow devices

• Spectre and Meltdown processor security flaws - explained

Serious security flaws that could let attackers steal sensitive data, including passwords and banking information, have been found in processors designed by Intel, AMD and ARM.

The flaws, named Meltdown and Spectre, were discovered by security researchers at Google's Project Zero in conjunction with academic and industry researchers from several countries. Combined they affect virtually every modern computer, including smartphones, tablets and PCs from all vendors and running almost any operating system.