From mining Bitcoin, driving up the price of graphics cards as much as 200% higher than last year, and RAM also being expensive (and companies are now being looked into for ‘price fixing’)..
There’s another threat that affects PC’s (and no, Mac users.. this one does affect you too). And if you’ve been living under a rock, you’re already affected without even knowing. This isn’t a virus, or a worm that would be eventually killed with an update and you’ll never have to worry about it again(unless the people responsible manage to undo the killswitch). This is a lot more serious…it’s a venerability with your CPU. There are two exploits now in effect.
The first one is called ‘Meltdown’ which primarily affects Intel CPUs, and the second one is called ‘Specter’ which affects both Intel and AMD. What these exploits do, is hijack the Kernel (which controls the data flowing between RAM and the CPU) and cause the hacker to literally take over your computer, and no amount of antivirus scans will save you. Some people have even reported no longer being able to boot their system up. On top of it, the ‘Specter’ exploit affects -all- AMD CPUs, including my own.
Instead of telling people to pop their CPUs out of their motherboard and to get a refund from the manufacture, a fix is coming from Microsoft (as well as for other OS’). The thing is, with this fix, users have reported slower than normal performance (as much as 30% slower, in some games). I thankfully haven’t seen any difference before and after the patch was applied.
So you may be thinking, you’re safe with this update.. think again. This ‘fix’ is nothing but a band-aid, as a hacker could reverse-engineer the thing and reactivate the exploit. This is why there is no long term fix coming, when that fix could be undone. A few patches here and there might come, but sources say they do more harm than good, especially for this new ‘Ryzen 2’ lineup coming in Q1 2018 (which seems to be mainly for laptops).
I can’t tell you what bad news this brings me once March gets here. The very thought of possibly losing my newly installed Ryzen 5 1600 to a hacker is not something I’m looking forward to.
Not to mention I would having to be paying double for RAM due to the increased prices from last year. It makes me want to kick myself in the past for not buying it back then(when it was cheaper), when I had the chance (and I’m sure a lot of other people would agree).
So here’s to hoping a long term fix is in the works, and the ones responsible can’t undo it. Though I don’t think it’ll happen, as Kernel isn’t easily fixed.