Microsoft has rushed out an out-of-cycle security patch to address problems created by what were supposed to be fixes for the Meltdown vulnerability that it had previously issued for 64-bit Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 systems. The patch basically allowed any running process on these systems to read the complete contents in memory and to write to it as well. The advice applies to all organizations and users that have installed any of Microsoft’s security updates during or after January 2018. The problem stemmed from a permission bit in a key memory table being set in “user” mode rather than “supervisor” mode.”]

