Apple said in an announcement Thursday night all its Mac systems and iOS devices are affected by two disclosed processor flaws called Spectre and Meltdown.
The issue has to do with modern processors, which are designed to perform something called "speculative execution" to enhance performance.
Computer analysts say data is supposed to be protected and isolated, but researchers discovered that in some cases, the information can be exposed while the processor queues it up.
Researchers said almost every computing system -- desktops, laptops, smartphones, and cloud servers -- is affected by the Spectre bug.
Researchers say Meltdown appears to be specific to Intel chips.
Apple is urging all users to make sure their computers, iOS devices and all apps are kept up to date to protect themselves against hackers exploiting the flaws.
"Since exploiting many of these issues requires a malicious app to be loaded on your Mac or iOS device, we recommend downloading software only from trusted sources such as the App Store," the company said.
Apple said it has released updates to defend against Meltdown in iOS 11.2, macOS 10.13.2 and tvOS 11.2.
It will release updates in Safari to defend against the Spectre bug "in the coming days," the release said.
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