Author Topic: "Meltdown" and "Spectre" - and how they will affect us  (Read 16542 times)

Offline AdeV

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"Meltdown" and "Spectre" - and how they will affect us
« on: January 05, 2018, 11:49:27 AM »
Hello all,

Unless you live under a rock :old: (or switch off totally at anything more technical than wiring a plug for your lathe  :ROFL:), you will have no doubt heard  :stickpoke: some news about a thing called "Meltdown" (which affects all Intel chips manufactured since either 1995 or 2005 or 2011 - depending on who you believe), and the unrelated but equally nasty "Spectre". These so-called "exploits" are causing much panic in the computer world, especially "Meltdown", as it turns out the only software fix available will slow your computer down by around 1/3rd. Which is a lot...

The first thing is, there's no need to worry, about the forum at least! This server is pretty well secured, and despite hundreds of thousands of attempts since it was started (about 1000 attacks per day, just on one entry point), no-one has yet got in. For "Meltdown" to work, the hacker has to run stuff on the actual machine he's hacking, and on a machine like this, that means someone gaining control of it.

Second - we are likely to experience some unscheduled downtime over the next few days & weeks, as our hosting company update their infrastructure. Any downtime should be short (5-mins or so, no more), but as with anything computery, things don't always come back from a reboot in good working order, so I'll try to keep a close eye on the forum for the next few days, at least until the virtual host tells me they're done with any rebooting. If I do get any advance notice of a reboot, I'll try to post it here, to keep you all up to date.

In the meantime, anyone with a CNC lathe is probably best sending it to me for evaluation, just to be on the safe side  :Jester:
Cheers,
Ade
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I'm just a poor old man. I have no time for law-breakers. My legs are grey. My ears are gnarled. My eyes are old and bent.

Online Jo

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Re: "Meltdown" and "Spectre" - and how they will affect us
« Reply #1 on: January 05, 2018, 12:00:31 PM »
Thanks Ade,

Any chance of doing a back up just in case  :zap:  :paranoia:

Jo
Enjoyment is more important than achievement.

Offline b.lindsey

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Re: "Meltdown" and "Spectre" - and how they will affect us
« Reply #2 on: January 05, 2018, 12:00:40 PM »
Many thanks Ade!!  Hopefully any interruptions will be brief as you say and the patches/fixes effective too!

Bill

Offline AdeV

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Re: "Meltdown" and "Spectre" - and how they will affect us
« Reply #3 on: January 05, 2018, 01:04:15 PM »
The server is backed up regularly Jo - every day at least, I may be able to increase that frequency, which I'll do if I can.

Cheers!
Ade.
Cheers,
Ade
--
I'm just a poor old man. I have no time for law-breakers. My legs are grey. My ears are gnarled. My eyes are old and bent.

Offline b.lindsey

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Re: "Meltdown" and "Spectre" - and how they will affect us
« Reply #4 on: January 07, 2018, 02:19:44 PM »
There were a few outages yesterday morning (USA time) I noticed, but as you had predicted, they were brief ones.

Bill

Offline AdeV

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Re: "Meltdown" and "Spectre" - and how they will affect us
« Reply #5 on: January 08, 2018, 03:44:30 PM »
There were a few outages yesterday morning (USA time) I noticed, but as you had predicted, they were brief ones.

Bill

Indeed... however, these were caused by my mail server, which has finally expired, taking the server with it every time it crashed (it fills the hard disk up).

Currently, ModelEngineMaker is not sending any e-mails to anyone, until I can get my replacement server up & running - working on that now...
Cheers,
Ade
--
I'm just a poor old man. I have no time for law-breakers. My legs are grey. My ears are gnarled. My eyes are old and bent.

Offline b.lindsey

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Re: "Meltdown" and "Spectre" - and how they will affect us
« Reply #6 on: January 08, 2018, 04:02:36 PM »
Ah, that probably also explains why email notifications of PM's have been days or even weeks late in arriving and usually in bunches. Not that it is an issue as I still see them on the forum. Thanks fo all you do Ade!!

Bill

 

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