Fresh bath of Spectre and Meltdown patches for Windows are incoming

Posted on Friday, November 30 2018 @ 13:16 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck

Microsoft announced they've started the rollout of a fresh batch of microcode updates for Intel processors. This includes patches for Spectre Variant 3a, Spectre Variant 4 and the L1TF vulnerability.

Intel recently announced that they have completed software validations and have started to release new microcode for current CPU platforms in reaction to the following threats:

Spectre Variant 3a (CVE-2018-3640: "Rogue System Register Read (RSRE)")
Spectre Variant 4 (CVE-2018-3639: "Speculative Store Bypass (SSB)")
L1TF (CVE-2018-3620, CVE-2018-3646: "L1 Terminal Fault")

A list of processors that will receive the update can be found at Microsoft's website. It will be interesting to see how much performance will be lost due to these new updates.

About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.

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