An Explanation of the Meltdown/Spectre Bugs for a Non-Technical Audience

Two significant computer bugs named Meltdown and Spectre were announced in January 2018. These vulnerabilities exploit technical systems implemented by modern CPUs to make computers fast, such as branch prediction and speculative execution. The core of these attacks is the ability to exfiltrate information from speculatively executed code through a side channel known as a cache. Meltdown and Spectre can be used to dump the entire memory of a computer, potentially exposing sensitive data like passwords and cryptographic secrets.