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Intel bug incoming? Meltdown and Spectre exploits

humbug said:
They are not supporting Z97 or Z87 which are in Intel's 5 year support plan.
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Where does it say they don't support those boards? I got a Z77 board so that would rule me out presumably. (According to MSI I'm invulnerable any way. :rolleyes:)

What it does say is currently which I think is a bit more optimistic:

"(currently offers updates for models that support 6th/7th/8th generation Intel® Core™ processors and X99/X299 platform)"

Further reading implies that more BIOSes will be released at a later point.
 
opethdisciple said:
Where does it say they don't support those boards? I got a Z77 board so that would rule me out presumably. (According to MSI I'm invulnerable any way. :rolleyes:)

What it does say is currently which I think is a bit more optimistic:

"(currently offers updates for models that support 6th/7th/8th generation Intel® Core™ processors and X99/X299 platform)"
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Intel will have Meltdown and Spectre fixes for 90 percent of recent products within a week

3 days left of that week.
 
opethdisciple said:
Where does it say they don't support those boards? I got a Z77 board so that would rule me out presumably. (According to MSI I'm invulnerable any way. :rolleyes:)

What it does say is currently which I think is a bit more optimistic:

"(currently offers updates for models that support 6th/7th/8th generation Intel® Core™ processors and X99/X299 platform)"

Further reading implies that more BIOSes will be released at a later point.
Click to expand...


indeed:

Updated software and firmware mitigations should be available in the next few days and will continue to be released over the next few weeks.
Click to expand...
 
humbug said:
Intel will have Meltdown and Spectre fixes for 90 percent of recent products within a week

3 days left of that week.
Click to expand...

What's a "recent" product? And the direct quotes don't even say that, they say for all products "introduced in the last five years", so presumably any chip launched before that (even if still available a couple of years back) falls outside that window. Then there is the issue as to whether a motherboard manufacturer is going to use any Intel fix issued to them in new BIOSes for anything more than a couple of years old.

It's impossible to get a clear answer out of these people, because they don't want to say things their customers won't like. Such as, they are not patching a lot of machines that are still in use because they feature chips (and the platforms that support them) that were launched more than a few years ago. I don't think I've seen any company say they are going to patch Z97 or Z87, and those were massively popular platforms that are still in use today.
 
Rofflay said:
I am not patching take the passwords i have fraud insurance and authenticators. No sir all the yummy 2fps more for me hopefully but i like to live on the edge. And i been hacked before and i got right back up. Because that is what makes back to back 95 96 two time champs.

And in my world 2fps can be the difference between being number one, Or being number no-one...
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:D

Rofflay said:
Just a joke about a crap situation. Formats and updates my systems running sweet yet now its all going to have to be redone. For me this is a 4 hr job.

And im on the gigabyte z87.
:(
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Once you have formatted, installed Windows, and installed your basic applications (notepad replacement, media player, etc.), just take an image snapshot so you don't have to do it again for a while.

a66as said:
Whats the worse that can actually happen from this hack? frying the cpu?
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Software reading memory it shouldn't have access to, i.e. your data isn't safe.
 
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DragonQ said:
Once you have formatted, installed Windows, and installed your basic applications (notepad replacement, media player, etc.), just take an image snapshot so you don't have to do it again for a while.



Software reading memory it shouldn't have access to, i.e. your data isn't safe.
Click to expand...

Well i only have games on mine and a few tools like msi afterburner and cpuz but i might not update the bios because the bios i have has nmve and ahci toggle. It was a custom bios they gave me and perfectly completed a z87 4770 beast until 2019. A format for me is always different also i do a lot of tweaks and slimdown anything and everything. It literally runs at a range of 7-55us in anything i can chuck at it.

It was perfect....
 
Steampunk said:
What's a "recent" product? And the direct quotes don't even say that, they say for all products "introduced in the last five years", so presumably any chip launched before that (even if still available a couple of years back) falls outside that window. Then there is the issue as to whether a motherboard manufacturer is going to use any Intel fix issued to them in new BIOSes for anything more than a couple of years old.

It's impossible to get a clear answer out of these people, because they don't want to say things their customers won't like. Such as, they are not patching a lot of machines that are still in use because they feature chips (and the platforms that support them) that were launched more than a few years ago. I don't think I've seen any company say they are going to patch Z97 or Z87, and those were massively popular platforms that are still in use today.
Click to expand...

Granted on the "recent Product" thing but (they say for all products "introduced in the last five years") includes Haswell and Ivy Bridge, perhaps even Sandy Bridge


a66as said:
Whats the worse that can actually happen from this hack? frying the cpu?
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Someone hacks into your system and monitors it for you using your passwords and bank account details.
 
Bonjour said:
BIOS release for our Dell hosts has an ETA of 1/2/2018. Everything else is in place, just waiting on those BIOSes.
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The date that Dell had listed for my laptop to get a BIOS update slipped by a few weeks in December, so they aren't exactly set in stone. That was also only for the ME vulnerability, who knows when the Spectre microcode updates will be deployed. Could be even longer.

a66as said:
on AMD systems the computer can only be hacked locally ? (as in you have to physically be there)
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You're confusing two issues. What you're thinking about is the recent PSP vulnerability that was discovered, which indeed can only be exploited locally. This is expected to be patched shortly. Similarly, four much more serious vulnerabilities in Intel's ME were discovered in 2017.

This thread, however, is about Meltdown and Spectre:

  • Meltdown (variant 3) affects all Intel CPUs from the last decade and possibly dating back to 1995 and is being resolved with OS updates. This affects performance significantly in some case, negligibly in others. AMD CPUs are not affacted.
  • Spectre (variant 1) affects essentially all CPUs and requires OS and software updates to mitigate. AMD has stated it does not expect any noticeable performance impact to its CPUs from such changes.
  • Spectre (variant 2) affects Intel CPUs and requires a microcode update, which are being rolled out now and also affect system performance. We don't know for how many generations Intel will produce microcode updates yet. AMD have stated they believe their CPUs to have "near-zero" risk to this variant due to architecture differences.
 
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