Thanx for the explanation gizmo.richards...appreciated. Again the Intel tool says my i7 model is not vulnerable. If you find errors or have question, email me: Modified date: As /u/mrbudman indicated, this is more of a concern for the cloud - where you have virtual machines, often owned by different people or companies, running on the same physical hardware. You can find that here: http://ibm.biz/PowerVUG [DW]. I am bewildered, it downloaded OK and worked Fine, but I just cannot understand the results, it tells me "This system's hardware has not been updated with new features required to allow its operating system to protect against the Spectre vulnerabilities and/or to minimize their impact upon the system's performance. From the above result, it can be seen that my PC has Meltdown mitigation in place but is not fully protected against Spectre.
“But you may wish to check back in a few days to see whether we may have found and fixed some last bits of debris,” Gibson adds.
Rather confusing to say the least. So what are these vulnerabilities really and why should you be concerned? " Either of the Protection Enable/Disable buttons will be disabled when the button's respective vulnerability cannot be enabled or disabled by its user. The bugs were named Spectre and Meltdown. It is also a fact, that Intel is recommending in January 2018 - not to apply the Meltdown and Spectre patches [CDATA[*/var myElements=document.getElementsByClassName("comment-unpublished");for(var i=0;i*/
Please try again later or use one of the other support options on this page. Alternatively, you can also bypass the current execution policy and directly proceed on to the next step by typing Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass at the PS prompt. The rushed nature of these updates meant that some patches negatively impacted Intel processors, causing repeated reboots, and some AMD-based machines reportedly got bricked by a Windows patch. Still, the possible sensitivity of the information that can be leaked warrants that these vulnerabilities be addressed quickly. So please use and enjoy InSpectre now. But the information leaked earlier and this made software and hardware vendors rush patches out. When did we accept "software patches" (aka firmware updates) as acceptable. In early January 2018, researchers discovered a couple of very serious bugs that exist in almost all CPU chips used in modern computers, phones and tablets. - Mobile Platform App Reviews for Android and iOS
January 2018 - 21:40(131210)
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“InSpectre Makes It Easy To See If Your PC Is Vulnerable To Spectre And Meltdown” Another nice summary of InSpectre by Shane McGlaun of HotHardware. Enter the following command to save the current execution policy to a defined variable.
Now you can see the reason I recommended holding off applying these patches. You can then click the “Disable Meltdown Protection” and “Disable Spectre Protection” buttons to toggle protection on or off. “InSpectre” is an easy to use & understand utility designed to clarify the many overlapping and confusing aspects of any Windows system's ability to prevent the Meltdown and Spectre attacks. something called as speculative execution — a fancy term for the manner in which CPUs try to predict upcoming instructions and execute them ahead of time to speed up processing. It does trigger one of VirusTotal's 66 different malware scanning engines, but this is almost certainly a false alarm and can safely be ignored.
Caveat: For the above security update to be delivered, your antivirus software must be configured to set a registry key in Windows. (Google: "Root Cause of Reboot Issue Identified")
You will see two sections — one for CVE-2017-5715 (Spectre Variant 2) and the other for CVE-2017-5754 (Meltdown). My laptop was good but my wife's needed a BIOS update. Search support or find a product: Search. Thanks for the link. Unless you have a serious need to do so, then we recommend that you don't do this. When did we accept "software patches" (aka firmware updates) as acceptable. One more fact is that these are read-only attacks, implying that hackers can only read the information being executed but not force anything on their own.
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You would not want to be accidentally run your production services without full protection and this is 100 times more important in a Cloud environment. Copy the following registry information into Notepad and save the file as a .reg file —, Key="HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" Subkey="SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\QualityCompat" Value="cadca5fe-87d3-4b96-b7fb-a231484277cc" Type="REG_DWORD”. This is a CPU vulnerability that allows a user-mode program to access kernel-mode memory. All variables in PowerShell are preceded by a $ sign. You can disable the Meltdown or Spectre protection with the InSpectre tool we mentioned above. Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Google, and Apple have all released security patches over the past month to ensure that the risks are mitigated as much as possible. In essence, the bugs could allow one malicious program to read the data of another program that is also running on the device at the same time, even though the CPU is supposed to keep each application's data separated. This bug affects all Intel processors manufactured since 1995 with the exception of Itanium and older Atom CPUs. Are we sure this can be trusted? Get notified by email of our latest finds: Terms & Conditions | Privacy Policy | Contact | About, The Gibson website explains the gray buttons in their Q & A: Ask yourself this — are you willing to sacrifice some performance for risk mitigation or is squeezing out the maximum performance till the last clock important? Cancel Unsubscribe. Due to the flaws being an inherent part of hardware design, there's not much that can be done other than mitigate the risks using a combination of microcode and OS level software updates. Submitted by classicggma65 on 23. To disable Meltdown or Spectre protection, right-click the InSpectre.exe file and then select “Run as Administrator”.
I am bewildered, it downloaded OK and worked Fine, but I just cannot understand the results, it tells me "This system's hardware has not been updated with new features required to allow its operating system to protect against the Spectre vulnerabilities and/or to minimize their impact upon the system's performance. No results were found for your search query. Nothing less than a full refund or a hardware replacement with a proper functioning processor is acceptable. While the patches themselves are getting stable with time, it is a good idea to check what is the protection status of your computer and the steps you can take to mitigate the risks as much as possible. Log in or register to post comments
Ran InSpectre but both buttons were gray and could not be clicked on...running Win7 and have all updates from Microsoft installed. Watson Product Search Since you're working with Administrator privileges, it is important to be able to save and revoke execution policies in the interest of security. Submitted by hilbreman on 22. Note that the program also has the option to allow you to disable any protection that has been installed. For example, Since AMD processors have never been subject to the Meltdown vulnerability, the Meltdown button will be disabled because there's no way for its protection to be disabled. Answer: Read the TechNote to find out! Things are getting better though and vendors are trying to deploy stable updates as much as possible. Log in or register to post comments
My favourite of all these checkers is called InSpectre, from the well respected Gibson Research Corporation. Most importantly, do not panic or spread FUD; instead understand, assess, and deploy the right updates at the right time to ensure security both at home and at the office. In any event probably 99% of the World's computer users have never even heard of this vulnerbility and most wouldn't have the savvy to update the BIOS anyway so I would have thought a more practical solution would be to stop the as yet non-existent Spectre and Meltdown malware from getting on to computers in the first place. The bugs were named Spectre and Meltdown. To get protection from the Spectre / Meltdown security issues you need a few items in place: 1) A systems firmware level that supports the protection, 2) The system firmware protection is actually switched on, 3) An AIX level that supports the protection, 4) New AIX command details to check: lparstat -x but no detailed information can be found via, For full information see TechNote: https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=ibm10715841. While customers expect they get the full performance advertised for their money, given the current situation, it is advisable to sacrifice a bit of speed to ensure data integrity. January 2018 - 23:56(131211)
The program runs on all recent versions of Windows, from 7 to 10. Microsoft has created a PowerShell script to check your PC status for Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities.
The Intel Management Engine can finally be disabled, thanks to the NSA. When I am not out finding the next big cure for cancer, I read and write about a lot of technology related stuff or go about ripping and re-assembling PCs and laptops. Submitted by classicggma65 on 25.
If your OEM has released a BIOS patch, you should see all entries here as 'True' as well. January 2018 - 14:20(131208)
Ran InSpectre tool and it confirmed the Microsoft patch was installed and my PC was not vulnerable to Meltdown plus confirmed my speed was not adversely impacted by the MS patch. I wonder therefore how good InSpectre is in detecting specific models which are vulnerable as in my case it appears to have come up with a false positive? You will get a prompt to install the NuGet provider.
OEMs and OS vendors will continue to polish these updates in the coming days so do watch out for those. This is because Microsoft has found that some third-party antivirus programs do not play well with the patch and can cause instability.
Spectre variants are potentially more dangerous than Meltdown as they can allow hackers to fish out information from running processes. 25 November 2019, [{"Business Unit":{"code":"BU054","label":"Systems w\/TPS"},"Product":{"code":"SWG10","label":"AIX"},"Component":"","Platform":[{"code":"PF002","label":"AIX"}],"Version":"All Versions","Edition":"","Line of Business":{"code":"","label":""}},{"Business Unit":{"code":"BU054","label":"Systems w\/TPS"},"Product":{"code":"HW1W1","label":"Power ->PowerLinux"},"Component":"","Platform":[{"code":"PF016","label":"Linux"}],"Version":"All Versions","Edition":"","Line of Business":{"code":"","label":""}},{"Business Unit":{"code":"BU054","label":"Systems w\/TPS"},"Product":{"code":"HW1A1","label":"Power Systems"},"Component":"","Platform":[{"code":"PF012","label":"IBM i"}],"Version":"All Versions","Edition":"","Line of Business":{"code":"","label":""}}], Checking AIX Protection against Spectre and Meltdown Settings, All POWER9 systems firmware has this builtin, You may need to upgrade your POWER7 or POWER8 firmware to a recent version - which is Best Practice anyway, To check this use the HMC -> ASMI -> "System Configuration“ -> "Speculative Execution Control“, To change the setting, first Power-Off the server (sorry) then go to the same place as above and change the setting plus Power Up the server, VIOS and AIX. However with the Microsoft guide and the registry tweaks or with InSpectre I can't disable all of the mitigations. In technical parlance, Meltdown and Spectre are identified by the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) listings. In that case the system is vulnerable and there's no way for the button to make it invulnerable. This InSpectre utility was designed to clarify every system's current situation so that appropriate measures can be taken to update the system's hardware and software for maximum security and performance. The affected Intel and AMD processor parts are sold but are not fit for purpose. Here, we are saving the Get -ExecutionPolicy to a variable, $SaveExecutionPolicy. [CDATA[*/var myElements=document.getElementsByClassName("comment-unpublished");for(var i=0;i*/
Submitted by rolou on 22.
The affected Intel and AMD processor parts are sold but are not fit for purpose The execution policy determines whether PS can run scripts or load configuration files. January 2018 - 2:34(131212)
If your PC is not patched for Spectre, a hacker who has local access to your computer can steal sensitive information that you enter in a browser form, for example. Installation of patches, (including for Spectre and Meltdown), often has unintended problems, including potentially significant hardware and software performance issues This last figure is based not on actual speed tests, but on the program's knowledge of which CPU you have and how it's known to be affected by the bugs. Its all beyond me I'm afraid, I wish Geeks could talk to idiots like me in plain English.