Opera: If you thought the Meltdown and Spectre fiasco was over, you're sorely mistaken. Especially when Intel itself admits that its own fixes are a complete failure.
Fortunately, however, the reaction of the rest of the industry was much more timely, as they managed to create the appropriate patches for the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities before it was too late.
Some companies, like Opera, are still focused on improving the experience after patches are delivered in an effort to ensure that there is no further risk of attack for users.
Opera browser 50.0.2762.67, which is part of the stable channel, introduces new Spectre fixes that are supposed to make it harder for a hacker to compromise a computer once a malicious website is loaded in that application.
The company explains that what the new version does is set a high-precision time for performance.now(), which is pretty much the same practice that other developer browsers, like those from Microsoft and Mozilla, use to prevent attacks.
Note that the company stated that the attacks will be "much harsher and less effective," so it is recommended to stay away from sites you don't trust and sent from unknown sources.
Opera also says that there will be further mitigations with Opera 51, adding that completely eliminating the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities is something that won't happen overnight.
If you haven't updated your browser yet, you can download Opera for Windows, Linux, and Mac to make sure you have the latest patches installed.
