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‘Downfall’ and Intel Macs: What you need to know about the flaw and fix

Remember those serious Meltdown and Spectre CPU flaws from about five years ago? Well, Intel’s in hot water again with another serious vulnerability that affects years worth of processors.

Known as “Downfall,” the vulnerability exploits a flaw in the AVX vector extensions of every Intel CPU from the Skylake generation onward until we get to the more recent 12th-gen Alder Lake processors. Macs with these processors started appearing in late 2015 with the 21.5-inch iMac, and just about every Intel-based Mac—desktop or laptop—since that time is

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