InSpectre - Check/Toggle your PC's defenses against Meltdown & Spectre[GRC.COM]

[splerdu]

https://www.grc.com/inspectre.htm



Nifty little tool that checks if appropriate patches and/or BIOS microcode updates have been applied to yer system to protect against Meltdown/Spectre. Also gives the option to toggle mitigations on or off to get more system performance (like toggle off when gaming, toggle on before opening any sensitive files or doing online banking).

[Mr. Bungle]

Win 10 Pro 1709 Build 16299.192
8700K
Asus ROG Strix Z370-F UEFI ver. 0606

[wheelee]

NO
YES
GOOD

win7 64bit
Phenom955
ASrock iCafe 870

[theDUD3]

NO
YES
GOOD

Win 10 Pro x64 1709 Build 16299.192
Ryzen 1700

[Mr. Bungle]

Microsoft has also released a PowerShell validation script to check if your computer is protected from speculation side channel vulnerabilities.

https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Speculation-Control-e36f0050

I tested my office desktop and here's what I got:



Win 10 Pro x64
Pentium G4560
Asrock B250M Pro4 UEFI ver. 2.20

[splerdu]

^ The problem with the script is that it's only immediately available if you're on W10 or Server 2016. Earlier versions require some fiddling with (installing WMF 5.1). If you have to do that, InSpectre is much smaller and easier to run.

If you're a sysadmin for a network though, SpeculationControl is probably better because you can make scripts to execute it remotely on a bunch of computers and pipe the output to a logfile.

[ris]

vulnerable din ako sa spectre...

no
yes
good

[bravoexo]

Main PC  (Ivy Bridge)

No
Yes
Slower

Main Laptop (Skylake)

No
Yes
Good

Now what?

[ris]

i just read the text on the program.  it mentions that my windows has already "awareness" of the two vulnerabilities but my hardware is not updated for protection from them.  i guess im just stuck with this since my hardware is too old to have some updates against these vulnerabilities

[Banhammer]

Thanks for this info @splerdu. I'm about to update my BIOS.

[Mr. Bungle]

There's a new Spectre variant in town. Fixes are on the way but will be disabled by default because Intel and MS believe that it has not been exploited in the wild yet and it carries a 2-8% performance penalty.