Apple has confirmed that all iPhones, iPads and Macs are vulnerable to attacks exploiting Meltdown and Spectre, two flaws found in almost all the world's processors. The company has already issued updates to mitigate such attacks, and has outlined its plans to keep devices secure going forward.

The flaws were disclosed this week by a security group associated with Google and by various researchers, and take advantage of a feature in chips built by Intel and ARM designed to improve performance. This "speculative execution" feature allows the processor to operate on multiple instructions at once, and is supposed to be invisible to software. The flaws show that this is not the case, potentially allowing ordinary apps to peer deep into the processor and grab information — from web addresses to passwords — as it moves through.

Apple's Macs and iPhones will all be getting software updates to guard against Meltdown. Credit:David Paul Morris

While the disclosure of the bugs was met with alarm that a flaw like this has been built into our machines for years (and also by an immediate interest in Intel's fluctuating stock price and speculation the company's CEO dumped his stock ahead of the disclosure, a claim Intel denies) what most people really want to know is what impact this will have on their devices.

Experts say Meltdown is the most pressing concern, as it is the easier of the two to exploit. It also should be effectively mitigated with an operating system update, but many believe machines will be slowed down as a result, with their speculative execution abilities limited.