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Spectre / Meltdown Fiasco - User Side

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Exactly, i don't use any of them Online.
Wow. :) You're... not very comfortable with computers. Or wasting their potential on gaming. But you're allowed to do that... for now. :p
Yes i do, on my Phone
It's most likely affected as well. :p
I hear that a lot from MS and often refuted by security experts. I did not install any of the patches on Win7 that are responsible for Win10 Upgrade push nor any of the Win10 tracking features adapted for Win7 ... . WU is set to advise of any available updates and within a week I will have examined each one, what it does and whether there is a reason to install ... or as the case may be, a reason not to install.
Wouldn't you prefer to just use the computer instead of reading update information? I'm assuming you're not an admin or IT security personel, because you would see some proof of these vulnerabilities by now. :p
I don't read the update information. Moving to W10, which automates this process, was a blessing in my opinion. It's like another layer of virtualization - you spend even less time worrying about your PC.
All the articles i have found so far address VM holes and such but have yet to see a hole demonstrated and confirmed on the desktop. The industry always has a reason to use FUD to promote sales and that's all I have seen so fare ... "could be".... "may be" .. yes I have seen those. I have not seen any such hole confirmed. Have yet to see any word of a confirmed exploit and that's the **reality** and what is on my radar.
There are many articles about this issue. I've linked few of them in other topics we had lately. You should simply look around.
I'd suggest starting with the articles from Graz University et al team:
https://meltdownattack.com/meltdown.pdf
https://spectreattack.com/spectre.pdf
 

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Folks take a break from this getting personal- reply bans issued/thread cleanup requested
 
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There really is no way this exploit could affect anyone but yourself as a home user, so I really dont understand why we are so emotional about what others do or dont do in terms of updates and patches. Its also an illusion anyone of us can force others to patch.

If you consider this exploit a risk thats not worth sacrificing a bit of performance for, by all means, but all I can say then is: when your negligence can threaten your livelihood, you are doing it wrong. It is a rather narrow minded approach I detect and a certain degree of naivity is involved.

This, to me, is simply a case of 'bite the bullet', take the loss and move along. The bottom line is that if you run something connected to the internet, full control of this rig is an illusion anyway.

Instead of this pointless direction we are heading in with this topic, I would much prefer BENCHMARKS pre and post patch on each of our rigs. Build a dataset, and lets call things what they are instead of hurling speculation back and forth.
 

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In the end the patches need further testing and feedback to streamline them for max performance and stability.
 
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There really is no way this exploit could affect anyone but yourself as a home user,

In an age of botnets, that's not true at all.
 
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There really is no way this exploit could affect anyone but yourself as a home user
Oh, really?

And what about companies that have your data? A breach to their systems won't affect you? :)

What about people you know that have your data?
When we give our personal info to someone, do they sign an agreement that they'll install all security updates? I know my friends don't. :)

That's why, for me, IT security is always a global thing. And when something as serious as Spectre/Meltdown comes around, the patches should by forced upon users in any way the manufacturers can. Simple as that. Yes, there will be a hit on performance, but it's just performance. It'll come back with next gen CPUs. We can live with slightly less of it for a moment.
I would much prefer BENCHMARKS pre and post patch on each of our rigs.
I don't see how this is important. Other than the fact that many people here just like benchmarks.
 
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I don't see how this is important. Other than the fact that many people here just like benchmarks.

Important regardless of the inevitable end result of "should patch." People like to know what they are losing, dude.
 
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In an age of botnets, that's not true at all.

That is a stretch though - from a longterm present malware that will read out data and call home, to actually being compromised for a botnet. That is not what this exploit entails, only what it ultimately can lead to, and again, for a home user, this really isnt of relevance right now.

As for @notb read carefully. You are expanding my statement into your zone of companies with my data, other people with my data. This topic really was meant to be about impact on the home user, on his own rig. We know for enterprise the risk and impact is huge. But for the home user? There is a risk, just like there is one for every other malware. I would consider a piece of ransomware however much more of a threat.
 
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Important regardless of the inevitable end result of "should patch." People like to know what they are losing, dude.
Ah... so we're still choosing between data security and CPU speed? I hoped this idea is going to die by now... :p

OK, I'll give you a hint. If this whole Spectre/Meltdown eruption didn't happen, but instead companies were selling 2 CPU variants - one of them with 10% performance bonus, but with a critical security flaw, would you consider this a serious offer?

Yes, people know what they are losing. I like to know that to, since I'm really relying on the performance of my rig - especially SSD speed, which got a huge blow with this quick fix. But I don't consider applying the patch as an option. I have to do it, I already did. Case closed.
Now a different thing is important: how CPU and OS makers can improve the solution. We only got a quick fix. A better one should lower the performance penalty.
Everything we had in the last 20 years was optimized with speculative execution taken for granted. Now some things will have to be rewritten and new CPU optimizations will have to take its place. So we got a single blow now, but it doesn't mean we'll never get back on that performance curve.
As for @notb read carefully. You are expanding my statement into your zone of companies with my data, other people with my data. This topic really was meant to be about impact on the home user, on his own rig. We know for enterprise the risk and impact is huge. But for the home user? There is a risk, just like there is one for every other malware. I would consider a piece of ransomware however much more of a threat.
Exactly! It's just another security patch!
How many critical security patches didn't you install lately?
Usually we don't spend so much time on discussing malware/ransomware security fixes' drawbacks, do we? I bet that if I created a topic "Do I really need an AV? It steals fps in games!" most of you would not have this kind of doubts.
Do you always benchmark your system before and after a Windows security fix? :)
And BTW: we all get daily AV definition updates. Surely each one makes scanning a bit longer and constant protection a bit more stressing on CPU, doesn't it? :)

The question that OP asked was: "What are the potential real world downsides to not patching in the desktop space ?"
Seriously, are you trying to tell me that a real world downside is the lost performance of a home PC? As opposed to e.g. leaking bank password, which would belong to which world? :)

I think the definition of "real world" got seriously distorted... but whatever. I'll leave you to your benchmarking if that's the case. :)
 
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On my current computer, I have a NVMe drive hooked to a sata convertor. Anyway, win10 64bit keeps trying to auto update even after turning it off. I have a windows 10 update short cut on my desk top, but because my current OS drive is compressed 10 can not update. It auto tries daily several times, I am going to swap over my mainboard and CPU soon to the X99 socket. Then ill let it do its thing(after I run a few tests to try n tell if anything does slow down). I even have a windows updates folder(i deleted it once) that keeps coming back on my OS drive(24.66MB ).
 
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Increase security with site isolation
When you turn on site isolation, Chrome offers more security protections for your browser.

Chrome will load each website in its own process. So, even if a site bypasses the same-origin policy, the extra security will help stop the site from stealing your data from another website. Learn more about site isolation.
  1. On your computer, open Chrome.
  2. In the address bar at the top, enter chrome://flags/#enable-site-per-process and press Enter.
  3. Next to 'Strict site isolation', click Enable.
  4. Click Relaunch now.
Known issues
  • Memory: Site isolation will increase Chrome's memory use by approximately 10–20%.
  • Printing: Cross-site iframes will be blank. To print the entire page, save the page to your computer. Then, open and print the saved file.
  • DevTools: Chrome Developer Tools don't fully support cross-site iframes with site isolation.

https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/7623121?hl=en-GB

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42564461

Thought it was nothing new, but it was disabled as default in my browser.
 
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Increase security with site isolation
When you turn on site isolation, Chrome offers more security protections for your browser.

Chrome will load each website in its own process. So, even if a site bypasses the same-origin policy, the extra security will help stop the site from stealing your data from another website. Learn more about site isolation.
Totally irrelevant. This may protect you from some high-level hacking methods - when JS in one site accesses objects from another one. This is blocked by design as a fundamental security measure. Otherwise computing would be just a mess. Imagine you open a tab with your bank and a tab with e.g. TPU - and server admins of this forum know exactly how much money you have. Of course, every now and then someone manages to breach this boarders, so running each page in a separate process is an additional security measure.

This will not protect you from Spectre or Meltdown. This methods access memory itself, not objects. It's a low-level attack.
In datacentre variant this actually makes it possible to access other virtual machines, let alone processes in your sandbox.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42564461
This is what happens when a news team manager forces his journalists to write about something important, but way too complicated for them. I remember how these guys "described" cryptocurrencies and crypto exchanges hacks not so long ago. Really bad stuff.
But the expert is not that much better:
"Even if an attacker did get access, they would get only "snippets" of data from the processor that could eventually be pieced together to reveal passwords or encryption keys, says cyber-security expert Alan Woodward, at the University of Surrey."
Someone who said this clearly doesn't really understand the importance of these attacks. They're all about getting "snippets" of data a.k.a. memory leaks. If these attacks could just access all memory objects on any PC that opens a malicious website, we would not call this a security threat, but an end of Internet as we know it. We would all have switch off our modems and go back to 1990. :)

Also, I love when you search for info about a Brit and the first page of results is dominated by a football player with the same name. I guess Brazilians might have a similar phenomenon going on.
"Alan Woodward (7 September 1946 – 21 May 2015) was a professional footballer who played"
"Mark William Ward (born 10 October 1962) is an English former footballer."
:-D
 
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This will not protect you from Spectre or Meltdown.

Did I say that?
I just happen to read that in the BBC article.

"When you turn on site isolation, Chrome offers more security protections for your browser."
Thought I'd share that, thats all.
 
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is there other people that has haswell/broadwell cpu based system having restarts and crashes after the this new Spectre update? i just got my first reboot since the patch alot of random crashes. are sandybridge cpu reporting any crashes since this update?
 
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is there other people that has haswell/broadwell cpu based system having restarts and crashes after the this new Spectre update? i just got my first reboot since the patch alot of random crashes. are sandybridge cpu reporting any crashes since this update?


my kabylake system did a bluescreen on me a few nights back while i was watching netflix.. only the one so far but i think the patch needs some tweaking..

trog
 
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Ah... so we're still choosing between data security and CPU speed? I hoped this idea is going to die by now... :p

Read again. I specifically said there is no justification to decide for "performance." That doesn't make it any less important to know what is lost.

this really isnt of relevance right now.

Trust me, anyone refusing to install patches is of interest to botnet operators.
 
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my kabylake system did a bluescreen on me a few nights back while i was watching netflix.. only the one so far but i think the patch needs some tweaking..

trog

Since update just been mostly program crashes like with flash player in Chrome, and corsair utility software, and my Wow game. And that one restart.
 
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I believe the most scary thing that has been demonstrated is breaking out of a browser sandbox to read memory outside the sandbox.
If that's using pure javascript it must be thanks to the modern JIT compilers in browsers for faster script execution.
 

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is there other people that has haswell/broadwell cpu based system having restarts and crashes after the this new Spectre update? i just got my first reboot since the patch alot of random crashes. are sandybridge cpu reporting any crashes since this update?

my kabylake system did a bluescreen on me a few nights back while i was watching netflix.. only the one so far but i think the patch needs some tweaking..

The day i installed the Patch my Coffee Lake Machine did a few random crashes and 1 or 2 reboots, so far no Bluescreen, many Games crashed or frozen, weird but true all this crashes happened just for one day, from the day after the installation until today has not happened again.

Note: One thing i have noticed, before the patch when i hit the power button the Machine checked the bios and booted after a few seconds but after the patch it takes a bit longer, from the Bios to windows it loads ok but when reading/loading the Bios that is the issue.
 
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Since this is supposed to be user side experiences rather than poo-slinging, I will say that my i3 w8.1 machine will not take the patch. Twice Sunday, twice yesterday, it goes into a separate screen that says updating computer, then halts with fatal error. :shadedshu:
 
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Wow... thanks RTW ...Having a place that avoids the poo slinging and other sidetracks was perhaps too optimistic :) ... we even managed to get how we might be affected by what others do ... but I can't worry about stuff over which I have no control. Still all I have seen is FUD, no actual instances of an observed problem ... at least as yet. I was hoping also to get a full list of KBs that apply the patch. And no I don't install security patches that do not affect our hardware. If Windows has a patch that permits a security breach involving hardware i don't own, then no i would not install that. I have not installed any of the patches that permit Win10 like tracking nor any of the forces Win10 ugrade stuff on Win7 boxes. We carefully read all KB information and make decisions based upon what it addresses. Why we don't install all patches right away ... especially when 1st dropped ? Should be obvious by now. Anyone remember Win 10 MS patch disabling SLI ? Any one remember XP SP disabling AutoCAD License manager leaving hundreds of engineering and architectural firms (like our own) staff sitting, getting paid and twiddling their thumbs cause they couldn't open the program ? We were unaffected because we wait a week before installing any patch. Woody Leonard (Computerworld) has tracked many such issues and checking this first has saved us from negative impacts more than once... we just wait until the patch isssues are resolved and then install ... if it applies to us. These patches are no exception:

https://www.computerworld.com/artic...ltdown-spectre-patches-for-amd-computers.html

Be sure to read the entire article about the impact of AV programs which need to be updated BEFORE these patches are applied of the patch doesn't happen.

"Since all of Microsoft’s patches now are cumulative (except the Win7 and 8.1 security-only manually downloaded patches), that means those who don’t pay for their antivirus product, or otherwise get thrown under the antivirus bus, won’t get any more Windows patches. Ever.

And most will never know why."


More here ...

"After investigating, Microsoft has determined that some AMD chipsets do not conform to the documentation previously provided to Microsoft to develop the Windows operating system mitigations to protect against the chipset vulnerabilities known as Spectre and Meltdown. To prevent AMD customers from getting into an unbootable state, Microsoft will temporarily pause sending the following Windows operating system updates to devices with impacted AMD processors at this time:

The updates include

January 3, 2018--KB4056897 (Security-only update)
January 9, 2018--KB4056894 (Monthly Rollup)
January 3, 2018--KB4056888 (OS Build 10586.1356)
January 3, 2018--KB4056892 (OS Build 16299.192)
January 3, 2018--KB4056891 (OS Build 15063.850)
January 3, 2018--KB4056890 (OS Build 14393.2007)
January 3, 2018--KB4056898 (Security-only update)
January 3, 2018--KB4056893 (OS Build 10240.17735)
January 9, 2018--KB4056895 (Monthly Rollup)"
 

Hugis

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I have installed Microcode 80 for Coffeelake by doing a Bios Update to my ASRock Z370 Taichi to version 1.40. I think this is meant to resolve some of the issues. I have installed all the Windows 7 Updates that have been pushed my way but it is hard to tell if the risk is truly mitigated. I tried running a Powershell script that Microsoft offered to test the vulnerability but it did not want to run.
 
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I wonder how hard it's going to be to update the AMD microcode. We don't exactly have an unofficial Universal Bios Updater (UBU) program on the AMD side of things, like Intel users do.
 

HTC

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I wonder how hard it's going to be to update the AMD microcode. We don't exactly have an unofficial Universal Bios Updater (UBU) program on the AMD side of things, like Intel users do.

Doesn't AMD do that when they update their AGESA microcode? Then the board makers update their BIOSes with this new AGESA, no?
 
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