Tuesday’s revelation of the existence of the “ZombieLoad” vulnerability and the subsequent patching of the issue in macOS has led some users to be angry about the potential 40% reduction in system performance for their Mac. While significant, that impact will really only impact a small percentage of Mac owners, while the vast majority of complainants are upset at something they just don’t need to endure
On Tuesday, researchers published details of a Meltdown and Spectre-like vulnerability in Intel’s processors, that could allow for data to be acquired via a technique called “ZombieLoad,” or Intel’s sexier name for it, “Microarchitectural Data Sampling.” By loading in data to a processor that cannot be properly processed, the processor can potentially leak the data from other apps, effectively allowing a malicious app to acquire sensitive data or to monitor the user’s browsing habits.
Apple was quick to patch the problem as part of the macOS Mojave 10.14.5 update on Monday, protecting effectively all Macs released from 2011 onwards. The patch itself has no measurable performance hit on Macs when left alone in its default state, however this did not provide a full mitigation for the vulnerability
Read more at AppleInsider.com