COMPANIES SCRAMBLE TO FIX COMPUTER FLAWS

such as Microsoft and Apple. However, tech companies are still working on finding all the fixes needed to defend against the vulnerabilities.

Apple said on Thursday that it had already released mitigations in iOS 11.2 and macOS 10.13.2 to defend against Meltdown and that the Apple watch is not affected by Meltdown. The technology group said it plans to release mitigations in web browser Safari in a defence against Spectre.

“All Mac systems and iOS devices are affected, but there are no known exploits impacting customers at this time,” Apple said on a support page. “Since exploiting many of these issues requires a malicious app to be loaded on your Mac or iOS device, we recommend downloading software only from trusted sources such as the App Store.”

Intel said on Thursday that by the end of next week it expected to have issued software updates covering 90 per cent of chips it has introduced in the past five years, and executives said they were confident that these would “fully mitigate” the problem without the need to replace any hardware.

But the vulnerability stretches back to chips produced over the past two decades, and the chipmaker said it would work with others in the industry to work out what more needed to be done.

Additional reporting by Alice Woodhouse