Windows 10: Protect your Windows devices against Spectre and Meltdown

Hi,

Been a Steve Gibson fan for decades. Sure knows his stuff.

Cheers, *Wink

 

Intel are now recomending not to update the microcode and to stop deployment, see here https://newsroom.intel.com/wp-conten...e-guidance.pdf

Intel Security Issue Update: Addressing Reboot Issues - Windows 10 Forums

 

Same here. He sure does know his stuff. Surprised that site isn't mentioned here more often.

Been using ShieldsUP for eons. He's the port ping king. *Smile

 

He is very well versed in his knowledge of computing...been using his site for many years!

 

Haven't heard of his Site for a while either ...decided to try LeakTest like in the old days ....seems I have some work to do.... *Sad

KB.

 

The DNS checker on his site is really useful. It polls all DNS servers accessible from your PC and identifies the fastest which may not be your internet service provider's. You can then set your default DNS server to a faster one if you want.

 

[youtube]I5mRwzVvFGE[/youtube]

 

To get the white papers on Meltdown & Spectre(and tons more technical information on the subject): Meltdown and Spectre

 

The timing of the whole Meltdown/Spectre thing is peculiar. The major players were alerted to the vulnerability in June 2017 and after discussion decided that they would announce the problem on January 9, 2018. Probably with the notion that it would get lost in the noise from CES. So here's a conspiracy theory... ;-)

Intel and AMD had considerable time to study the 3 vulnerabilities and figure out how their processors would be affected. AMD thought the impact on their processors would be minimal, withess their inital pronouncement when the news broke early. Intel realized Meltdown mitigation would have more of an impact on their processors than on AMD's so they decided to suggest a Meltdown fix to be applied to both Intel and AMD processors. Tom Lendacky, the Linux guy at AMD, figured this out and wrote a memo on December 26, 2017 stating that AMD processors were not vulnerable to Meltdown and should not have this fix applied: LKML: Tom Lendacky: [PATCH] x86/cpu, x86/pti: Do not enable PTI on AMD processors

That Tom Lendacky memo caught the attention of others too and a few days later an article appeared in "The Register" that exposed Meltdown/Spectre about a week earlier than planned.

When Linus Torvalds saw this memo he realized that Intel was willing to compromise Linux performance on AMD machines so Intel machines would not be the only ones to suffer a performance hit. This apparently triggered his well publicised Intel rant.

I expect Intel did the same thing with Microsoft. Thus, both Linux and MS had to scramble to re-code the changes they had been making to handle Meltdown, likely leading to the Win 10 releases that failed to boot on older AMD processors - still, it's hard to excuse MS for failing to test on at least one older AMD computer.

I've got two older AMD machines with Win 10 (so Spectre 1 is patched). Neither is likely to ever see a BIOS update so there's little choice but to hope that AMD's opinion is correct: Spectre 2 is very difficult to weaponize on AMD. Even the toy versions of Spectre 2 don't work reliably on AMD according to the original reports.

 

aaaaaaaaaah!! Nooooooo!!!!! It's a conspiracy!!!

 

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/new...e-mitigations/

 

this was mentioned in yesterday's Intel Security Posting too.... about 1/2 way down

Intel Product Security Center

 

Cos that is the Wrong Intel Tool , it is for November's Issue.... Not M&S Issue in Dec.

 

I guess I was deleting my post as you were replying. I just went back to Intel and got the Intel ME FW Update Tool. It is dated 28Jan18 same as that InSpectre tool. Same result.

 

I got this HP Convertible at the end of December and it has an AMD A9 processor, even though I'm up to date with all necessary Windows updates and since upgraded the BIOS and UEFI firmware from HP for this machine that tool from Steve's site still showed Spectre Protected: NO!
I did read somewhere that even with the necessary patches and upgrades some machines could still be vulnerable though. *Huh