INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Remember the Meltdown and Spectre fixes that Intel is baking into its processors to make them bulletproof to these vulnerabilities at a
sources who spoke to Threatpost, the aforementioned safeguards which Intel is implementing may protect against Spectre Variants 2 and 3, but
not this fourth incarnation.There may also be further spins along these sort of speculative execution side channel vulnerabilities in the
future, the sources further noted (which is precisely why Microsoft, for one, recently kicked off a major bug bounty program with big
the microcode update for Variant 4 in beta form to OEM system manufacturers and system software vendors, and we expect it will be released
performance price to pay, just like previous Meltdown and Spectre patches
Intel estimates that to be a slowdown of around 2% to 8% based on SYSmark and other benchmarks, but of course mileage will doubtless vary
pre-Windows 10).Interestingly, Intel will be delivering this Variant 4 fix as an optional measure, and it will actually be set to off by
That means users will need to enable protection if they so wish, or carry on regardless and avoid any performance hit, with the potential
risk of being exploited down the line.
