Catalin Cimpanu, reporting for BleepingComputer: Google has just published details on two vulnerabilities named Meltdown and Spectre that in the company's assessment affect "every processor [released] since 1995." Google says the two bugs can be exploited to "to steal data which is currently processed on the computer," which includes "your passwords stored in a password manager or browser, your personal photos, emails, instant messages and even business-critical documents." Furthermore, Google says that tests on virtual machines used in cloud computing environments extracted data from other customers using the same server. The bugs were discovered by Jann Horn, a security researcher with Google Project Zero, Google's elite security team. These are the same bugs that have been reported earlier this week as affecting Intel CPUs. Google was planning to release details about Meltdown and Spectre next week but decided to publish the reports today "because of existing public reports and growing speculation in the press and security research community about the issue, which raises the risk of exploitation."

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