Meltdown and Specter: The recent gaps in multi-processor architecture built over the past two decades are the latest security breach that has hit the IT industry.
The phenomenon Meltdown and Specter once again came to confirm what many know but find it difficult to admit: no one should think of their system as safe. It is much more likely to recognize a system as "stable" and of course as potentially unsafe. 
This means thinking about security as a continuous process and not as an end point.
Specter and Meltdown flaws are present in most Intel CPUs by 1995, and other chip manufacturers are affected.
For many, it may seem inconceivable that such serious weaknesses remain unannounced for so many years (NSA's joy). But it's just a function of the incredible complexity of the systems we all use. Before too long, there was another: Do you remember Heartbleed? The loophole in the OpenSSL cryptographic library that was released with its own logo and shedding panic on IT globally. Remember Shellshock? The WannaCry ransomware?
Security is a utopia and believing that your systems are absolutely safe you are living a very dangerous illusion. Just suppose your systems are precarious, and you'll start making better decisions.
Security has ceased to exist with the advent of the internet, but many of us do not seem to have realized it. Specter and Meltdown are two good examples because they can affect everything from the PC in your office and the smartphone you have in your pocket to the cloud service you use to store your data. No matter how good you are at “security,” today you rely on the constellation of service providers and their various partners.
The code of any software, operating, or firmware shipped by suppliers is inevitably incomplete, so there will always be updates. Implementing these fixes is considered a tedious and tedious job by many IT. Especially in corporate environments, where every update should be monitored by IT to make sure they don't cause problems in their implementation. So often updates aren't the first priority, though. The WannaCry ransomware was released last year, though Microsoft had released a patch.
Of course this is what hackers know. Updates exist, but there are also systems that are not up to date.
So, what is security?
If you assume there is no security, you will have a greater chance of getting online and going safely. The aim of the article is to be suspicious.
There are no companies that can protect you, and if they promise they lie. Security means knowing that it does not exist, which prepares you for the worst scenarios.
