Spectre family of vulnerabilities are more widespread threat than previously thought, Google researchers say. Google computer scientists found that any optimizations to the architecture in modern processors are observable and thus open to side-channel attacks. The research builds on the original efforts by independent research groups in late 2017 that found that two broad classes of flawsMeltdown and Spectrecould allow attackers the ability to access areas of a processor’s memory that had been thought to be protected. The company shipped early mitigations, including timer mitigation, in Chrome 64 to 67.”]