This is a way to protect Linux Mint from Meltdown and Specter

New Linux developers have officially voiced the two vulnerabilities of Meltdown and Specter, suggesting ways to help users protect their computers.

Last week, two officially released security holes, Meltdown and Specter, affected billions of Intel, AMD, ARM and Qualtomm chips. In order to mitigate the effects of these two errors, both hardware and software manufacturers have started entering the update, redesign and software races.

Most OS and web browsers are affected. Linux Mint is one of the popular GNU / Linux kernels with millions of users but has not been patched yet depending on Ubuntu's OS update.

These holes are very serious. They put the memory data of any application running in danger (including web browser scripts), Clement Lefebvre, who is behind Mint. 'Consider accessing important data (such as email accounts) with 2-factor authentication'.

This is how to protect PC Linux Mint

Linux Mint developers say they will soon release a patch to minimize the impact of Meltdown and Specter on Linux Mint 18.x and Linux Mint 17.x but for now, they encourage users to update Mozilla Firefox to version 57.0.4 and update Nvidia graphics driver to 584,111.

Update browser, driver, microcode while waiting for OS update

They also offer instructions on Google Chrome, Chromium and Opera, encouraging users to install CPU and QEMU microcode updates as soon as they are released. LMDE users (Linux Mint Debian Edition) already have a kernel patch before Meltdown and Specter.

All LMDE users need to install Linux 3.16.51-3 + debu8u1 and reboot the system. The remaining Mint people need to check the software regularly in the coming days because new kernel versions from Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) are promised by Canonical soon.

At the same time, MInt developers are also offering new features on Linux Mint 19 Tara, which is based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) and is preparing for the release of LMDE 3 this year.

See detailed instructions here.https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3496

See more:

1. Intel released Microcode for CPU Linux to fix Meltdown and Specter
2. How to know if your Windows computer is affected by Meltdown and Specter?
3. Intel faces many class action lawsuits because of a chip security error