Linux Kernel 4.15 Officially Released, Includes Patches for Meltdown and Spectre

As expected, Linus Torvalds announced today the release of the Linux 4.15 kernel series, the first to be fully patched against the Meltdown and Spectre security vulnerabilities.

Linux kernel 4.15 has been in development for the past eight weeks, during which the kernel developers were extremely busy to redesign the kernel against two critical hardware bugs that were publicly disclosed earlier this month and put billions of devices at risk of attacks, dubbed Meltdown and Spectre.

That's right, Linux kernel 4.15 is the first kernel series to be fully patched against the Meltdown and Spectre security vulnerabilities, but only for the x86 and PowerPC (PPC) architectures. If you're using a GNU/Linux distribution with an Intel or AMD processor, chances are it's vulnerable to Meltdown and Spectre.

Of course, the rest of the long-term supported Linux kernel series received patches to mitigate Meltdown and Spectre, but there were so many that we bet users don't even know w...