Server and System Status

As you may have heard and read in the news since the beginning of January, major vulnerabilities in very widely used computer hardware (not software) were discovered in mid-2017 by security researchers in Austria, Germany, the United States and Australia, and were publicised on 3 January. Fixes to mitigate some of the vulnerabilities are now being released, and further mitigating measures are under active development where such mitigation is possible.

To this end we will be applying patches to our servers starting tomorrow (18 January) that will necessitate some down time. Due to the nature and scale of this problem — illustrated by the answer to the question, “Am I affected by the vulnerability?” being a simple, “Most certainly, yes” — these patches cannot be delayed or scheduled for a more convenient time. Also, as work continues on ways to mitigate some of the vulnerabilities, there are some updates to the operating systems on our servers that are yet to be developed that will need to be applied in the future. As further related maintenance takes place we will link back to this post.

Following this blog post we will post the details of the first server to undergo patching.

Further details on these vulnerabilities can be read at the following links:

• Meltdown and Spectre
• Meltdown Wikipedia article
• Spectre Wikipedia article

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us. Thank-you for your patience.