Apple Releases Meltdown and Spectre Kernel Fixes for MacOS High Sierra, Sierra, and El Capitan

Apple often only issues fixes for the latest release of its operating systems, but with today’s update they’ve gone back and released kernel fixes for MacOS 10.12 Sierra and OS X 10.11 El Capitan. Kudos to Apple for doing this. (There are Safari fixes going back to El Capitan, too.)

Update: Note from a friend:

Mac security fixes are virtually always backported to the two major releases prior to the current one. The only exception I’m aware of is broadpwn, which was patched for Sierra but not for 10.11 or 10.10. I’m glad they do this in general, but given the severity I think they were absolutely obliged to backport Meltdown fixes. The delay was unnerving.

★ Tuesday, 23 January 2018