If you want to check if your Intel processor is affected by the Meltdown and Specter vulnerabilities, you can do it officially, as the company has just published a list of all the chips that are in danger. Both exploits are still very much alive as manufacturers and developers try to patch them. For now there are only effective security patches against Meltdown, not against Specter.
It's a matter of time to arrive, but meanwhile it does not hurt to take some precautions, such as protect yourself against Specter and Meltdown if you are a user of Chrome or Firefox. You can also install the first security patches that Microsoft and other signatures have published. Of course, there is still a long way to go.
Among the Intel processors vulnerable to Meltdown and Specter are virtually all manufactured by this brand in the last 15 years, from Intel Core second generation to the eighth, recently introduced and hit the market. It is a very serious matter that should worry you even if you do not have a chip from this company.
For now the first updates have not involved the much-vaunted impact on CPU performance, which seemed particularly serious. Due to the nature of both failures, only data centers should worry about a significant drop in performance, which will surely force them to invest a lot of money to get back to the point where they were.
