QOTW: Is your PC protected against Meltdown and Spectre?

[peterb]

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.

It is, and by the time you add in the exceptions - its almost not worth doing!

Edit:

I’ve just checked the updates and MacOS and Safari have been updated to mitigate against the effects of Meltdown and Spectre (conveniently abbreviated to MS) so I may re-enable it.

[EasterEEL]

MSI Gaming 7 with i7 4970k processor circa q3-2014 apparently hardware still sold mainstream until about 3 years ago is not going to be protected with a BIOS update.

[lodore]

MSI Gaming 7 with i7 4970k processor circa q3-2014 apparently hardware still sold mainstream until about 3 years ago is not going to be protected with a BIOS update.

I recommended emailing MSI as I got a bios update for my 4770k system which isn't listed on the website

[wateva76]

My main PC is Ryzen based, so is safe from Meltdown, and should be safer from Spectre (I'm running Windows 10 1803). My custom built NAS has a Haswell Xeon E3, running ESXi 6.5. That one isn't so lucky. It's one of the older CPU's that Intel won't fix, so that one is pretty much done. Same with the even older Wolfdale i5-650 system I'm building up for older games.

[Presto86]

My PC is protected from Meltdown but not Spectre. Bios is up to date from MSI (B150M) and all other drivers are up to date as well.

[LeetyMcLeet]

I disabled the protection. Yolo.

[kryton666]

MSI good emailed me a Haswell beta bios on request.
Asus bad emailed them about my other haswell pc & got default link to intel only supporting skylake forward page.
2nd email asking about new intel haswell code update end of Feb & silence.
I know whose hardware I will be buying in the future!

[Fizzl]

Checking if you are vulnerable to malware by downloading random executables from the web.

[Dashers]

Home computer Gigabyte X99 Haswell-E is fully patched.

Work HP workstation fully patched. Interestingly, VMWare workstation VMs under a fully patched system are only patched for Meltdown.

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.

Hackintosh & Linux here. Do I need to worry?

These vulnerabilities exist at the hardware level, all OS' are vulnerable. There is some work that can be done at the OS level to mitigate this vector, but not all. There needs to be microcode updates done at the hardware level to remove it.

Some of the attacks allow for unprivileged process jumping. No amount of UAC or containerisation is going to protect you from that. A malicious web-site has the potential for reading your Word instance. Your porn site your banking screen.

[ETR316]

Does anyone remember when the spectre and meltdown debacle started and then went into full swing? Intel stated procs would be out this year with hardware level fixes. WHERE are those AND is anyone keeping track as to WHEN? OR do we have to wait until an entirely new architecture comes out? I would think so, but that would put a hardware fix on 10th Generation and not the 9th. Does anyone have more light on that subject?

[DanceswithUnix]

Does anyone remember when the spectre and meltdown debacle started and then went into full swing? Intel stated procs would be out this year with hardware level fixes. WHERE are those AND is anyone keeping track as to WHEN? OR do we have to wait until an entirely new architecture comes out? I would think so, but that would put a hardware fix on 10th Generation and not the 9th. Does anyone have more light on that subject?

I gather from the latest OoO speculation problem (Speculative Store Bypass: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018...arm-and-intel/ ) that AMD have already released microcode that allows you to turn off the speculation that is used by Spectre and of course they weren't hit by Meltdown anyway. So yes, processors are available that are "fixed" albeit with a performance penalty of about 8% if you turn that fix on, but it isn't an Intel processor