Windows 10: Windows 10’s Spring 2019 Update will make your Spectre patched PC faster

Intel and security researchers discovered two critical vulnerabilities Spectre and Meltdown which affected some processors. Intel processors were the ones that were mostly found vulnerable to the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerability.

The performance of the PCs was affected for up to 18% due to the Spectre vulnerability found in the processor of PCs. To mitigate such vulnerabilities, Microsoft has enabled “Retpoline” in its next major update Windows 10 19H1.

Currently, Microsoft is shipping the 19H1 updates to Insiders in the Fast and Skip Ahead Ring and Retpoline is enabled by default for the Insiders. This was confirmed by one of the team members of the Windows Kernel team engineer Mehmet Iyigun on his official Twitter handle.

Developer Alex Ionescu discovered that the “Retpoline Kernel” is enabled in Windows 10’s Spring 2019 update and when he ran a filesystem benchmark on Surface Pro 4, he noticed a big improvement in transfer speeds, especially at smaller block sizes.

This was confirmed by Microsoft’s Windows Kernel team in a follow-up tweet:

“Yes, we have enabled retpoline by default in our 19H1 flights along with what we call “import optimization” to further reduce perf impact due to indirect calls in kernel-mode. Combined, these reduce the perf impact of Spectre v2 mitigations to noise-level for most scenarios,” Microsoft’s Mehmet Iyigun explains.

The availability of Retpoline by default in next major version of Windows 10 would mean that the Spectre vulnerability is mitigated to a large extent and now the PC processors will have an impact of less than 3% as against the earlier 30%.

“Retpoline as a mitigation strategy swaps indirect branches for returns, to avoid using predictions which come from the BTB, as they can be poisoned by an attacker,” an expert explains.

The post Windows 10’s Spring 2019 Update will make your Spectre patched PC faster appeared first on Windows Latest

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Windows Update Intel Patches for Meltdown & Spectre

1. If there are no problems, you should not at all uninstall a Windows update. Microsoft is too, not at all recommending to uninstall.

2. Nope, sorry. Windows 10 updates are cumulative that contains all previous patches. Seeing the questions from the past few days on the forum, I can say that the questions regarding problems with Spectre patch have dropped.

3. Yes, you should let Windows 10 updates to automatic. This makes your PC install the Patches/Fixes faster.

 

Windows Update Intel Patches for Meltdown & Spectre

URGENT - Please Microsoft:

1. Provide a List of Windows Updates that included the (bad) Intel Patches for Meltdown & Spectre (which Intel now say should NOT be installed).

2. Advise IF (and HOW) the Windows Updates that included (bad) Intel Patches for Meltdown & Spectre should be 'removed' by End Users?

3. If Microsoft Identifies (to it's Community) Windows Updates that included (bad) Intel Patches, can Users remove them - while still getting any other 'fixes' (that did NOT relate to Meltdown & Spectre) included in the Same Windows Updates that contained
the (bad) Patches for Meltdown & Spectre?

4. How do Users ensure that ant Windows Updates they remove - to 'eject' the (bad) Intel Patch for Meltdown & Spectre - are not 'automatically' re-installed' later - by Automatic Windows Updates, when Windows notices the 'removed updates' are not installed?

Note: I've looked at the Microsoft.com Descriptions of Numerous Recent Windows Updates and (although some refer to 'security') none seem to specifically mention Intel, Meltdown or Spectre - so I can't determine which Windows Updates included the 'bad' Intel
Patches.

 

Spectre Patch reinstall

If I install Spectre patch on windows 10 1703 (KB4056891).

Then Windows update ask me to upgrade to Windows Build 1709.

Do I need to reinstall the Spectre patch or not?