by Marian Draganov
SOFIA, April 24 (Xinhua) -- The Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities in modern processors which were revealed in early January raise concerns, although the problem has already been patched, a Bulgarian expert told Xinhua on Monday.
"It turned out that this is a big generic problem in all the processors that are currently being produced," said George Sharkov, director of European Software Institute -- Center Eastern Europe, and head of Cybersecurity Lab at Sofia Tech Park.
In general, these vulnerabilities were very dangerous because they ultimately applied to all computers and mobile devices, Sharkov said.
All manufacturers have taken a serious approach, and it was claimed that the problem has been fixed for the popular operating systems, he said.
So far, it has been proven that the problem with processors can be solved at the expense of their performance, Sharkov said. However, manufacturers have been working on solutions related to the design or the underlying software that serves the processor itself, in order not to reduce the performance, he added.
So far, there have been no reported cases of how these vulnerabilities could be used to break the software, applications, or operating systems, although theoretical models have been found by several laboratories, Sharkov said.
According to him, this was rather a signal that the devices around people, including important devices like computer processors, had inherited evolutionary problems.
Sharkov believed that the solution relies on manufacturers and on very serious tests, not only physical tests, but also those related to compliance with different standards in the design, production and use.
