Intel bug incoming? Meltdown and Spectre exploits

opethdisciple · 6 Apr 2018 at 21:32

DragonQ said:
Page 10.

Cool, thanks for that. It's green. Does that mean that Intel do plan to release a new MCU for Ivy Bridge?

Absolutely nothing since 2014 (before that the last bios was 2012!) bios wise from Gigabyte for this board.

DragonQ · 6 Apr 2018 at 22:10

opethdisciple said:
Cool, thanks for that. It's green. Does that mean that Intel do plan to release a new MCU for Ivy Bridge?

Absolutely nothing since 2014 (before that the last bios was 2012!) bios wise from Gigabyte for this board.

Yes, it's already released. Ivy Bridge says "Production" under "Production Status" and "0x1F" under "New Production MCU Rev". You can download it here (CPUID 306A9) if you wanna research how to inject it into your BIOS yourself.

Note there are other types of Ivy Bridge like Ivy Bridge-E, so this is only applicable for that CPUID.

AmateurExpert · 6 Apr 2018 at 22:29

Dang, I'll have to upgrade my laptop - it's over 10 years old, 10 of that without the burden of Windows. Doesn't time fly...

opethdisciple · 6 Apr 2018 at 22:43

DragonQ said:
Yes, it's already released. Ivy Bridge says "Production" under "Production Status" and "0x1F" under "New Production MCU Rev". You can download it here (CPUID 306A9) if you wanna research how to inject it into your BIOS yourself.

Note there are other types of Ivy Bridge like Ivy Bridge-E, so this is only applicable for that CPUID.

3570k.

Any guide out there how inject the binary?

DragonQ · 6 Apr 2018 at 22:48

opethdisciple said:
3570k.

Any guide out there how inject the binary?

Depends what type of BIOS you have. This guide is for AMI UEFI ones, for example.

IT Troll · 7 Apr 2018 at 09:53

It is rather poor that motherboard manufacturers are not providing BIOS updates for older models even though fixed microcode is available. All they have to do is inject the microcode into the last BIOS version and rerelease. Without this, end users have to roll their own, or resort to buying new hardware to ensure protection. Hmmm....

hudson86 · 7 Apr 2018 at 10:27

I cant see any Sandybrige-E on that list or am i going mad, heres my CpuId and so on, am i missing something obvious. Thanks !

DragonQ · 7 Apr 2018 at 11:09

I don't think either of those tools provides your actual CPUID. Use HWInfo64 to see, then check the PDF:

You can generally find the latest microcode files here.

Alternatively, if you are using UBU to update your AMI UEFI BIOS then it'll grab the latest version for you automatically anyway.

V F · 7 Apr 2018 at 17:19

IT Troll said:
It is rather poor that motherboard manufacturers are not providing BIOS updates for older models even though fixed microcode is available. All they have to do is inject the microcode into the last BIOS version and rerelease. Without this, end users have to roll their own, or resort to buying new hardware to ensure protection. Hmmm....

That’s the plan. How else will profits be made?

opethdisciple · 8 Apr 2018 at 12:18

Some what contradictory article claims new MCU's to come through windows update.

IT Troll · 8 Apr 2018 at 16:07

opethdisciple said:
Some what contradictory article claims new MCU's to come through windows update.

The Skylake one has been available for some time. Microsoft said the others would follow (Windows 10 only). This is a good solution for the typical, less technical, home user who doesn't want to mess with BIOS updates. This method is volatile though and so needs to load every time Windows boots.

hudson86 · 12 Apr 2018 at 20:38

DragonQ said:
I don't think either of those tools provides your actual CPUID. Use HWInfo64 to see, then check the PDF:

You can generally find the latest microcode files here.

Alternatively, if you are using UBU to update your AMI UEFI BIOS then it'll grab the latest version for you automatically anyway.

Apologies, only just saw your response, thanks for that, mines a 00206D7 and comes under Sandybridge server , even those its not listed in there .. hopefully !

gbgt2 · 15 May 2018 at 12:03

I updated my Strix X99 motherboard to the 1902 Beta BIOS at the weekend. It seems to be stable so far with the previous overclock I had but I've only really done limited testing (couple of runs of cinebench / one run of 3dmark time spy). CPU scores actually seem identical as before. Weirdly my GPU score seemed a bit lower in time spy but I only did one run so might be margin of error (since I wouldn't expect that to be impacted ..)

ltron · 15 May 2018 at 12:40

opethdisciple said:
Some what contradictory article claims new MCU's to come through windows update.

They haven't even bothered to release a patch with the Spectre microcode for 1803 yet even though this is available for earlier versions and would be trivial to do. They really like taking their sweet time.

Bonjour · 15 May 2018 at 12:44

We've updated / patched all our systems now. Well, those with bios updates at least. Worst effected seems to be our SQL server. Quite noticeable degradation in performance.

fastboy · 15 May 2018 at 12:48

I didn't notice any gaming/benching difference worth noting but my ssd seemed a bit slower from what I recall after my z370 bios patch

ltron · 15 May 2018 at 12:52

gbgt2 said:
I updated my Strix X99 motherboard to the 1902 Beta BIOS at the weekend. It seems to be stable so far with the previous overclock I had but I've only really done limited testing (couple of runs of cinebench / one run of 3dmark time spy). CPU scores actually seem identical as before. Weirdly my GPU score seemed a bit lower in time spy but I only did one run so might be margin of error (since I wouldn't expect that to be impacted ..)

Strange, I lost 3% in all 3dmark CPU tests. I have a 5820K and Gigabyte X99 SOC Champion. I was using the microcode patch supplied through Windows Update for version 1709 rather than a BIOS update though.

The worst one was the Aida64 FPU VP8 test where I lost 25% performance.

shamus21 · 15 May 2018 at 13:14

Unless security is the issue I would not be worried about updating the bios. If it is only a gaming build I would prefer to go with more performance.

gbgt2 · 15 May 2018 at 13:44

shamus21 said:
Unless security is the issue I would not be worried about updating the bios. If it is only a gaming build I would prefer to go with more performance.

For most people though their gaming PC is also their main PC that they use for everything else as well

Rroff · 15 May 2018 at 13:49

gbgt2 said:
For most people though their gaming PC is also their main PC that they use for everything else as well

Depends what your usage is - the main vulnerability for most home users to these attacks is the web-browser (although this could also include web-browsers in games, etc. that don't always render using the default system browser i.e. have their own webkit and java libraries - though most developers have stopped doing that due to the ongoing security considerations it requires).

Where they are real concerns is where you have other users able to login to a system i.e. virtual machines or VPS and/or externally serving data in a way that might be vulnerable to exploitation via buffer overruns, etc. such as some database systems.

On my gaming systems I've not even bothered with OS/BIOS patches against Meltdown, etc. as if a game update or mod, etc. is infected then these exploits are the least of my worries once something like that is already in (things like web browsers I've made such are patched with the latest mitigations).

EDIT: To be clear I'm not necessarily advocating this as a course of action.