The year 2018 was a watershed year with respect to micro-architectural vulnerabilities starting off with the Spectre/Meltdown attacks in the beginning of the year. This was succeeded by a spate of vulnerabilities in multiple aspects of the x86 micro-architecture related to speculative execution. This talk will present you with an understanding of these attacks and how they have been mitigated. We will also cover the performance impacts of these interventions in software and hardware.