While I don't underestimate the scope and possible ramifications, I still don't understand the immediate threat to the average person. The malicious hacker that

While I don't underestimate the scope and possible ramifications, I still don't understand the immediate threat to the average person. The malicious hacker that is after secret personal information does not need to go to the trouble of writing a trojan that exploits Spectre or Meltdown when a simple keylogger and file scanner would be much simpler and probably more effective. The article itself states: "So far, Meltdown and Spectre probably pose less risk to the average person than, say, a simple phishing attack in which a hacker tries to send you to a malicious website. They won’t lead to the kind of widespread panic that resulted from the 2017 hack of Equifax’s customer database. But that could change. Hackers who hadn’t tried to break into Intel’s hardware, believing there was no way it would leave a side door open, are now seeking ways in." "But that could change" is a vague term that doesn't mean much to me. Again - not trivialising this nor saying Intel shouldn't do some soul searching, but I'd like to better understand the justification for the apparent hysteria - unless, of course some people more experienced in security would care to explain what it is I'm missing here. P.S. One thing I wanted to check was whether Spectre/Meltdown breaches could somehow be caused by manipulating a web browser. Some searching revealed that this is indeed a possibility so at this point, everyone feel free to panic :-)