The Xbox One, S, and Xbox One X are unaffected by the Spectre and Meltdown chip issues

By Jez Corden
published

Recently, chip vendors were rocked by security revelations about their processors, by which malicious actors could gain information directly from data currently being processed.

It appears that Intel, ARM, and AMD chips were all impacted, and since the Xbox One family is powered by AMD's Jaguar, you might have been wondering if your console was vulnerable. Thankfully, it appears that isn't the case.

Speaking on Twitter, Xbox Platform lead Mike Ybarra noted that the Xbox One's security structure already prevents attacks from the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities.

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While its encouraging to see that Xbox is unaffected, the widespread ramifications for other types of devices, from PCs, to phones, and web servers, have yet to be fully measured. Microsoft issued its own emergency patch to Windows 10 just yesterday, but it could be a while before the issues are fully ironed out across the world. And there's that whole issue of Intel's CEO selling off a load of stock just before the revelations, oh dear. It's all quite the drama.

If you want to learn more about the issues, hit the links below. In the meanwhile, know that at least your Xbox and (fully updated) Windows 10 PC are probably safe.

Jez Corden
Jez Corden
Co-Managing Editor

Jez Corden a Managing Editor at Windows Central, focusing primarily on all things Xbox and gaming. Jez is known for breaking exclusive news and analysis as relates to the Microsoft ecosystem while being powered by caffeine. Follow on Twitter @JezCorden and listen to his Xbox Two podcast, all about, you guessed it, Xbox!

13 Comments
  • Tremble at my sick photoshop skills mortals
  • Like a Boss xD
  • Lolz~~
  • Money well spent. =P
  • Meltdown wouldn't affect it anyway, that's only on Intel CPUs. AMD has to deal with Spectre only which isn't that bad.
  • Any vulnerability is bad it doesn't matter how hard it is to exploit and AMDs response to the Spectre exploit is frankly disturbing.
  • Why is the response disturbing? They have already made a patch available for Spectre 1, and have cause to believe Spectre 2 is almost, if not impossible to exploit on their chips...
  • It isn't that bad because the fix doesn't cause any slowdowns on computers and servers and AMD fixed it a while ago.
  • "the security architecture of Xbox"? more like we knew about it, didn't tell anyone and patched it quietly with online updates
  • ...um, it actually is a secure architecture.  Test this, find a way to load malware 'intentionally'.  Windows Store Apps run in a secure framework, and XBox Games are certified by Microsoft.  Both are designed to ensure they don't attempt to touch something they shouldn't, with Microsoft also screening them on top of the architectural security. At most, Edge would need an update, but without it, using the exploit wouldn't gain access to anything.
  • Now I'm curious about Win10S :p
  • it's a good design, i'm not saying it's not, but i think they're making broad statements and misleading people by just dismissing the whole thing doesn't mean it's invulnerable to remote code execution from the outside backwards compatability legacy code runs in a virtual machine and still connects out to Live so anything is possible
  • Is this because of the virtualization that Xbox uses or more of a hardware architecture?