Join Sign in
☎ 0800 527 867
or Contact Us >
THE LAPTOP COMPANY LTD
  • Products
    • Apple
    • Dynabook Toshiba
    • HP
    • Lenovo
    • Microsoft Surface
    • Education Shop
    • Work from Home gear
    • All Products
  • Solutions
    • AOG Government Agencies
    • Local Government
    • Financial sector
    • Schools and Students >
      • Smarter Classrooms
    • HP Sustainability
    • Work From Home
    • Switch to Surface >
      • Microsoft Academic
      • Microsoft Sports
      • Microsoft for Healthcare
      • Microsoft Design and Construction
  • Services
    • Device management
    • Device deployment
    • Fleet management
    • Procurement services
    • Finance and leasing
  • Support
    • Covid-19 Info
    • Get Support
    • Apple Repairs
    • About Us
    • Terms and Conditions
  • News
    • Tech News
    • News and Alerts

'Meltdown' and 'Spectre' critical vulnerability

10/1/2018

 
A critical vulnerability has been discovered in the architecture of the modern CPU. There are three different attack methods and are leveraging the reading of privilege memory with a side channel.

The attack methods named are 'Meltdown' and 'Spectre'. While initially only thought to be an Intel vulnerability, the CPU's speculative execution methods that these attacks target are shared by Intel, AMD and Arm.

The attacks themselves do not access sensitive data on your storage, however they do potentially allow malicious code to access speculatively executed information.

Details from Intel can be found here.
Details from AMD can be found here.
Details from Arm can be found here.
Details from Microsoft can be found here.

​More information on Speculative Execution can be found here.
Detailed information (from Google) about the vulnerabilities can be found here.
Picture

There are multiple parts to patching this vulnerability with operating system patches, and the OEM manufacturer updating the microcode of the processor itself:
  • Variant 1: Bounds check bypass
    • Requires operating system updates
    • Vulnerable to Spectre attack
  • Variant 2: Branch target injection
    • Requires processor microcode updates
    • Requires operating system updates
    • Vulnerable to Spectre attack
  • Variant 3: Rogue data cache load
    • Requires operating system updates
    • Vulnerable to Meltdown attack

For all of our hardware customers; we will be maintaining a set of links on this page for your reference.  If you require any support on this issue then please contact our support team or your account manager through your usual channels. ​For our ongoing SCCM support contract customers, we have already started the update management process and will liaise with you directly on performing updates as they become available.

Microsoft has released a blog post about the vulnerabilities and the impact of them. Take note that this article discusses the performance impacts of patching your system. It appears that older operating systems such as Windows 7 and 8 have a more noticeable performance hit than Windows 10.

Running Windows Update should patch the Operating System part of the vulnerability, below are the OEM links that will be maintained with firmware/BIOS updates.

OEM Links;
  • Lenovo
  • Toshiba
  • HP

Comments are closed.

    The Laptop Company

    News and announcements

    Archives

    December 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    November 2018
    July 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017

    Contact Us
    x

      Contact us 

      Would you like to know more about these updates, or information about the services available from The Laptop Company?  For personal assistance during business hours, please call 0800 527 867.
    Send
About
Legal information
Contact
Picture
© COPYRIGHT THE LAPTOP COMPANY (LTD) 2018. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Products
    • Apple
    • Dynabook Toshiba
    • HP
    • Lenovo
    • Microsoft Surface
    • Education Shop
    • Work from Home gear
    • All Products
  • Solutions
    • AOG Government Agencies
    • Local Government
    • Financial sector
    • Schools and Students >
      • Smarter Classrooms
    • HP Sustainability
    • Work From Home
    • Switch to Surface >
      • Microsoft Academic
      • Microsoft Sports
      • Microsoft for Healthcare
      • Microsoft Design and Construction
  • Services
    • Device management
    • Device deployment
    • Fleet management
    • Procurement services
    • Finance and leasing
  • Support
    • Covid-19 Info
    • Get Support
    • Apple Repairs
    • About Us
    • Terms and Conditions
  • News
    • Tech News
    • News and Alerts