Windows Client Guidance against speculative execution vulnerabilities

Well that new Spectre/Meltdown checker just comfirms my system is still toast ! This whole effort is becoming a real JOKE !

Hi,

johngalt said:

But your buttons are not disabled....

Meaning you CAN click them. So... Click!

That actually surpises me. Can Inspectre really fix both issues with just a click of a radio button ?

Cheers,

fdegrove said:

Hi,



That actually surpises me. Can Inspectre really fix both issues with just a click of a radio button ?

Cheers,

I don't really think that one can enable the protection against Spectre & Meltdown just by the click of a button as per screenshot in post # 311 for InSpectre. My understanding is that if one has already applied the BIOS/UEFI firmware update, it will enable the protection if not already done. Otherwise, there is no way the GRC's little app can do it.

Hi,

Ok, thanks guys. I thought as much but it's a bit misleading.
At this stage most of us are still in the same boat waiting for Intel to figure out how to protect us from Spectre attacks without awkward side effects such as sudden reboots.
If they can fix it without significant performance loss then I'll apply the fix.
If not I'll leave it as is. Such attacks aren't easy to execute anyhow and it's not as if I'm running machines with goldmines of info either. LOL.

Cheers,

VBF said:

Variant 1 - Spectre (CVE-2017-5753) – software fix already available on all Windows systems via Windows Update and browser updates are also available (Edge & Chrome & Firefox confirmed fixed)
Variant 2 - Spectre (CVE-2017-5715) – Requires ‘Microcode’ update which will most likely come in a BIOS update – currently not fixed
Variant 3 - Meltdown (CVE-2017-5754) – software fix already available on all Windows systems via Windows Update

And...... my PC has the latest MS updates installed but so far, no BIOS update.
When I run InSpectre I get:

Very well illustrated example of what I said in my post # 315. :)

Hi,

So i could DISABLE Meltdown Protection if i wanted to, but cannot alter Spectre Protection.
I imagine (!) that were I to DISABLE Meltdown Protection, because i have the MS patches installed, i could then RE ENABLE it....but I ain't gonna try!

Disabling it and then re-enabling it is pretty easy to do actually.

I presume that if I DID have the BIOS update, then I could disable both the Meltdown and Spectre protections and, presumably, re-enable them.

The Spectre patch is at hardware level so I doubt that that can be toggled. It's a bit like if you could toggle between BIOS\UEFI versions which you can't.


Cheers,