Apple says almost all its devices are affected by the Spectre and Meltdown bugs

Apple Watches not affected

A pair of security vulnerabilities affect virtually all Apple products but are not currently affecting users, the company said.

Known as “Spectre” and “Meltdown”, the issues “apply to all modern processors and affect nearly all computing devices and operating systems,” Apple said in a press release. Apple Watches were not believed to be affected.

“All Mac systems and iOS devices are affected, but there are no known exploits impacting customers at this time,” the company said.

Apple said it would release a patch to help guard Safari against Spectre and advised only downloading software from trustworthy sources.

The two security flaws have caused issues across the technology industry, leaving companies scrambling to push out fixes. Researchers have warned that they could enable hackers to steal vulnerable information.

Researchers at Google’s Project Zero and academic institutions discovered the issues last year and disclosed them this week.

Intel products are said to be especially vulnerable, but the company issued a statement dismissing as inaccurate reports that the problem was unique to its products.

“Intel and other technology companies have been made aware of new security research describing software analysis methods that, when used for malicious purposes, have the potential to improperly gather sensitive data from computing devices that are operating as designed,” the company said. “Intel believes these exploits do not have the potential to corrupt, modify or delete data”.

Intel said it had planned to have fixes available soon.

“Check with your operating system vendor or system manufacturer and apply any available updates as soon as they are available,” the company said.