Back in January 2018, a consortium of security researchers from organizations including Google, Cyberus Technology and several universities disclosed two ominously-named vulnerabilities found in nearly all modern computer processors. These vulnerabilities broke open the floodgates for research into flaws in some of the most fundamental security protections found in computer processors. Meltdown, Spectre, and the other related vulnerabilities are significantly more dangerous and useful to an attacker in a virtual environment versus a non-virtual server or desktop. In response, I expect to see Intel and AMD eventually create separate processor lines to protect cloud applications from this threat.
