FYI: Update your Windows PCs this Tuesday

[Tempest]

Just an FYI for everyone; there's an extremely dangerous security flaw that has just been revealed in the last few days. It allows attackers to read contents from protected memory, and it affects all Intel CPUs made in the last 23 years, and partially affects AMD and ARM processors.

 

In layman's terms, it would let even a webpage read passwords, encryption keys, and other secure content from your computer without you knowing.

 

The fix for this is going to be in an update from Microsoft on Tuesday. Macs may already have an update, and Linux I know already has the patch in the mainline kernel, so keep an eye for any updates, and install them ASAP.

 

This fix does incur a not insignificant performane penalty on computers, ranging from 5% to 50% depending on the exact task and CPU. Your computer *will* be slowed down though regardless by this fix, but please install it anyways. This is a dangerous security flaw, with known working exploits.

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2018/01/03/intel-meltdown-spectre-vulnerabilities-leave-millions-open-to-cyber-attack/#e6b957739328

[Wolfox]

thanks for letting the people who didn't know know

[seki108]

On 1/3/2018 at 10:17 PM, Tempest said:

This fix does incur a not insignificant performane penalty on computers, ranging from 5% to 50% depending on the exact task and CPU. Your computer *will* be slowed down though regardless by this fix, but please install it anyways. This is a dangerous security flaw, with known working exploits.

Is there a projected time frame for when this flaw might be fixed more efficiently?  Currently, my computer seems to be going more toward the higher end of that projection, with significant complete stops.  Even something as 'low allocation(?)' as this site is causing quite the performance drop.  Just editing this comment is taking far longer than usual.

 

Edit: Strangely, this only made Firefox's performance plummeted lower than any browser has been on my laptop.  Chrome seems to actually have better performance (though I might have just gotten used to FF's performance over the past few days).