Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities Intel (and AMD) Chip Bug

Anonymous
2018-01-04T01:54:57+00:00

A lot of noise on the internet, after Intel confirm that chips have a bug:

https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-responds-to-security-research-findings/ 

This post is to bring some light on this.

1- Intel says is not only their chips affected

2- PCID (Process-Context Identifiers), a chip feature,  has a bug that allow apps (malware) to read data

3- Process-context identifiers (PCIDs) are a facility by which a logical processor may cache information for multiple linear-address spaces. The processor may retain cached information when software switches to a different linear address space with a different PCID.

4- Macintosh and Linux OS are also affected.

Rumors:

1- If you have Haswell (4th-gen) or newer, PCID (Process-Context Identifiers) is enabled. 

2- After apply the patch, performance is going to be slower on newer CPU. Around 5 to 10%.

2- Still if you have older CPU, performance will be affected worse than newer CPUs.

3- To be affected you must have a OS 64 bits. {Correction: 32bits has vulnerability, MS still working on this)

Just as I'm writing this, Linus Torvalds and his team are working on this too:

https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/1/2/703

https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/20180102222354.qikjmf7dvnjgbkxe%40alap3.anarazel.de

Can we get a word from Microsoft?

For windows, What patch is going to address this? (Update: Patch links and KB are listed on postings)

Is that is going to be on the Montly Rollup and/or Security only patches? (Update: See the links posted)

If performance is going to suffer, can we be able to uninstall such patch? (Update: Microsoft published a document about it, See the links posted)

Please, any info will be appreciated.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Security and privacy

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-01-09T15:47:37+00:00

    Oh boy...Thanks for the update I had not heard that yet.

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-01-09T15:45:16+00:00

    Just to add to the confusion, Microsoft just announced that block the Jan updates on some AMD chips, due to some nasty BSOD.

    Microsoft has reports of some customers with AMD devices getting into an unbootable state after installing this KB.   To prevent this issue, Microsoft will temporarily pause Windows OS updates to devices with impacted AMD processors at this time.

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4056894/windows-7-update-kb4056894

    Be careful!. Test before you deploy on your computers.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-01-09T00:47:32+00:00

    It is a good video isn't it?

    Here is an update from HP by the way:

    Get your Support Assistant on fellow HP users:

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-01-08T23:19:01+00:00

    Yep.  However there are already IDS/IPS signatures out to help protect you if are using decent security.  I would say the average home user could be entirely unprotected depending on what other 3rd party security they are using. 

    That's a great video by the way.   User mode and Kernel mode memory should have always been separated.  To me at least, it seems as if someone long ago knew they were breaking the rules, but competition for speed and $ drove us to this.

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  5. Anonymous
    2018-01-08T23:01:44+00:00

    You probably know that the information vulnerability being exploited by these side channel attacks known as Meltdown and Spectre is information that is (without these patches and updates) entirely unprotected. 

    The vulnerability being exploited actually dates back to before paired devices and all that really became a thing and no one stopped to think they might need to protect this stuff.

    Here's an easy to understand video for those casual users who may still be unclear as to what is being targeted and how:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syAdX44pokE

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