Vice.com
– Last week, researchers revealed the existence of Meltdown, one of two
major security flaws that affects pretty much every modern computer and
could allow attackers to gain access everything on those computers,
including passwords and other sensitive personal information. After
patches to fix this vulnerability were released, rumors circulated that
the patches could significantly degrade a computer’s performance.
While this is concerning for anybody, it could be a big problem for the
people who use their CPU—a computer’s “brain”—to mine Monero, the only
top 20 cryptocurrency by market cap that supports CPU mining, rather
than requiring graphics cards or other specialized hardware. It would
also be a serious hit to operations that hijack CPU power from tons of
people to turn a profit, like the in-browser mining extension Coinhive
or the North Korean university students who apparently created Monero
mining malware.