Re: Grumpy bastards
It's similar to MacOS, Windows, Linux, used as single user systems: To exploit, you need to get malware on the computer. And if an attacker manages to get malware on the computer, you have lost anyway. So being careful, downloading from trusted sources only, that kind of thing protects you.
On an Ethernet switch running all code as root, as soon as you get malware on it, you've lost. Meltdown/spectre don't help the attacker, he has already won. The problem is to get the malware running, and there is just no way in. So Cisco doesn't need Spectre / Meltdown protection, just malware protection.