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Apple Releases Meltdown and Spectre Fixes For Older Versions of MacOS (neowin.net)

Posted by BeauHD on from the love-spreading dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Neowin: Apple released its round of bug fix/security updates -- including iOS 11.2.5, macOS 10.13.3 High Sierra, watchOS 4.2.2, and tvOS 11.2.5 -- today. In doing so, it also offered some security updates for Macs running older versions of its OS, including OS X 10.11 El Capitan and macOS 10.12 Sierra. The security updates mainly focus on the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, which were fixed for High Sierra users a couple of weeks ago. OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan got the smallest update, including fixes for IOHIDFamily, Kernel, QuartzCore, and Wi-Fi. As for the Sierra update, it's available for machines that are running macOS 10.12.6. It includes the above fixes, but it also includes improvements for Audio, LinkPresentation, Security, and there's an additional Kernel fix.

5 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. No risk of higher spurious reboot rates? by ls671 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No risk of higher spurious reboots rates?

    How did Apple pull this one off?

    Intel Urges OEMs and End Users To Stop Deploying Spectre Patch As It May 'Introduce Higher Than Expected Reboots

    https://it.slashdot.org/story/...

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    Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
    1. Re:No risk of higher spurious reboot rates? by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 2

      The microcode is from Intel, but there are other ways to fight these vulnerabilities.

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      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  2. Standard practice by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Apple has been keeping the three most-recent versions of macOS / OS X patched for quite a few years now. What was actually a bit unusual was them releasing a partial patch for High Sierra without also posting patches for Sierra and El Capitan at the same time.

    Regardless, I'm glad to see this since I'm (intentionally) still running El Capitan.

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    #DeleteChrome
  3. Re:Older? by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 2

    High Sierra runs fin on my 2011 MBP (16GB RAM, 1TB SSD). If it didn't, I'd upgrade this 6 year old boat anchor to get the newer OS, but it's had a pretty great run of it already.

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    Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
  4. Re:Older? by Maury+Markowitz · · Score: 2

    > Each new version gets bigger and incrementally slower

    I certainly haven't seen that. My machine's from 2013, and I haven't seen any sort of slowdown in spite of updating many times. Larger yes, but not slower. Quite the opposite, a few graphics-related tasks got faster, and there's Metal on the gaming side.