QOTW: Is your PC protected against Meltdown and Spectre?

[stevie lee]

System is Meltdown protected: YES
System is Spectre protected: NO!
Microcode Update Available: NO!
Performance: GOOD

am3 gigabyte ga-870a-usb3 and PII x6 1090t

not checked gigabyte website to see if any bios updates for spectre. very much doubt it though.
am I bothered, not in the slightest.

[julian98]

running an i5 3470 so nope but going to upgrade soon to ryzen

[dandyp]

See my post #14, worth a try.

[mercyground]

given they have to exploit your machine to use it... I'm really not bothered and tbh i wish i could remove the patches so i can regain my lost performance.

For servers. Sure. patch mandatory but for home use? meh.

[adidan]

This is to the last three or 4 comments above. I had to contact Asrock and Gigabyte directly, using the support section of their respective sites. Both of my systems are Ivy Bridge Z77 motherboards, with recently released micro-code updates. Neither company has put the updates on the boards' respective support sites, however they sent me the bios updates via email, I installed them, and everything works fine.

It may take MONTHS for your motherboards' site to be officially updated, but my personal experience is that my 2 motherboards from 2012 now have bios updates, all it took was asking for them, via the appropriate channels.

Thanks, that's good to know.

[nar53]

Hackintosh & Linux here. Do I need to worry?

[peterb]

Given that it needs a malware injection to exploit it, it is protected by my normal malware precautions.

My only windows pc won’t be patched, but as that is only used for a couple of legacy applications, i’m not overly concerned.

Apple have released code that mitigates the threat, and the later Linux kernels do the same, but that is no reason to be complacent.

[lodore]

I got a very prompt response from MSI and my system is now protected against spectre with performance good with the bios applied.

[Percy1983]

System is Meltdown protected: YES
System is Spectre protected: NO!
Microcode Update Available: NO!
Performance: GOOD

Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3 + PII x6 1050T

Am I worried? not at all.

This is my secondary PC at my work.

[aidanjt]

given they have to exploit your machine to use it...

Where did you get that impression? Even javascript pulled in by any ad or website can potentially exploit the meltdown and spectre flaws and read privileged data from your system memory.

[Ozaron]

You bet.

[saldos]

intel 930 so unlikely .. time to upgrade perhaps

[mikeo]

Just installed the latest BIOS for my MSI Z170A Gaming M7. And from looking at what's "fixed" I assumed this would sort out Spectre protected. But the above app. still shows :

System is Spectre protected: NO!

Confused I am.

[DanceswithUnix]

Given that it needs a malware injection to exploit it, it is protected by my normal malware precautions.
.

Nope, it's vulnerable to drive by JavaScript. At least update to the latest browser.

[peterb]

Currently have javascript disabled.

[DanceswithUnix]

Currently have javascript disabled.

Blimey, does anything on the web work?? Java I disable on web pages, it is just a useless attack surface with a pitiful history of drive by exploits. But Javascript is everywhere so I would have thought that would be a real pain.

I believe the latest browsers use a system of masking array offsets so they can't go off the end of valid storage rather than just using a compare instruction which should defang the exploit.