Apple confirmed on Thursday that all Mac and iOS devices are affected by the Meltdown and Spectre CPU flaws that have roiled the computing industry for the past 24 hours, resulting in a race to patch operating systems and cloud computing infrastructure at the highest levels.
“‘All Mac systems and iOS devices are affected, but there are no known exploits impacting customers at this time,” the company writes in a blog post. “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.”
Apple was one of the last remaining holdouts to speak up about Meltdown and Spectre, although it was already widely believed Apple devices were affected due to the company’s use of components from chip manufactures like Intel and ARM. Apple says that it has already mitigated some of the potential negative consequences of Meltdown, which is the Intel-specific exploit, with patches to iOS (11.2), macOS (10.13.2), and tvOS (11.2).
The company says it plans to issue patches for Safari on macOS and iOS to better help devices defend against Spectre, which is more easily exploitable and affects devices using chips from Intel, AMD, and ARM. Apple Watch devices are not affected by Meltdown in any way, the company confirms.
Correction: A previous version of this article mistakenly said the Apple Watch makes use of an Intel chip in relation to the device’s immunity to Meltdown. That is not the case, and we regret the error.