Here are some simple ways to partially protect against the newly disclosed #Meltdown and #Spectre exploits. These are likely to be especially relevant to Steemit users, who are more likely than most to be storing cryptocurrency on their home machines.

#1 - Use Spybot Search and Destroy's Immunize Feature

You can't fix the exploit, but you can avoid going to a site running malicious code in the first place. Spybot's Immunize feature adds entries to your machine's host file to redirect known malicious sites to localhost so that you're never exposed to malicious code in the first place.

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#2 - Enable Chrome's Strict Site Isolation feature

To enable it just paste the following address into your address bar and then click Enable chrome://flags/#enable-site-per-process

Google is recommending this as a partial solution to the Spectre Variant 1 bug, but until Chrome 64 is released you'll still want to take extra care in your browsing. Even after Chrome 64 is released, be aware that these bugs will still possibly be exploitable, though it will be more difficult for attackers.

Note: Site isolation will increase Chrome's memory use by approximately 10–20%.

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#3 - Update EVERYTHING

If you're like me, you disabled automatic updates when Microsoft started abusing them to push Windows 10 adware and telemetry onto your machines. Now would be a very good time to resume automatic updates. The battle to secure against these exploits is going to go on for decades, and you'll want to take advantage of every security fix you can get your hands on.

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Stay safe out there!