Security alert - "Meltdown" and "Spectre"

[robkelk]

...
I'm really not sure where the cell phone password advice is coming from -- most cell chips are on ARM and Spectre isn't all that exploitable yet.  That sounds a little like sky-is-falling paranoia.

The only problem being that the sky is actually falling.  ...

Yeah, that's the thing. Some people really do have a wolf to worry about, so this cry of "wolf!" is real for them. (It's definitely real for those of us who store passwords n their desktop or laptop browsers.)

Oh, yes - patch your systems before changing your passwords. If you do it in the other order, your new passwords will have been vulnerable to discovery and will need to be changed again.