I believe this article is refering to Meltdown, which exclusively impacts Intel processors.
Spectre, on the other hand, has a much more far reaching impact, and one that will be harder to fix, too.
Here's info on Spectre. Definitely give it a read, as it almost undoubtably affects you.
Here's a quote from the paper.
We have empirically verified the vulnerability
of several Intel processors to Spectre attacks, including
Ivy Bridge, Haswell and Skylake based processors.
We have also verified the attack’s applicability
to AMD Ryzen CPUs. Finally, we have also successfully
mounted Spectre attacks on several Samsung and
Qualcomm processors (which use an ARM architecture)
found in popular mobile phones.
So basically, everyone is vulnerable. Furthermore, in the paper, they demonstrate how the attack can be launched through JavaScript. In other words, an attack launched through your browser can read private processor memory. This is
really bad. On the brightside, this will probably lead to an influx of investment and research into processor security, which is good.
I wouldn't bother freaking out too much. As of yet, we do not know of any attacks in the wild that use Spectre or Meltdown. After all, this exploit was independently discovered in a research labs, so malevolent actors likely haven't had enough time to adopt these attack methods yet. That's not to say they aren't scrambling to put something together, though. People are slow to update their hardware and OS, so it's likely these are vulnerabilities that will remain effective for years to come. Just don't be those shmucks; make sure to update your computers regularly, especially in coming weeks.
