It's not hyperbole to say that Meltdown and Spectre CPU vulnerabilities are a disaster. They affect pretty much every processor used over the past two decades and practically every device. In the right hands, they could reveal things like passwords and other secure information. While many companies have rushed to patch against Meltdown, which specifically affects Intel chips and lets hackers access the memory of apps being used by an operating system, Spectre is more stubborn. It won't be fully resolved until chip makers move to new architectures -- a process that could take years.