{"id":123043,"date":"2018-01-20T18:00:26","date_gmt":"2018-01-20T16:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=123043"},"modified":"2018-01-20T18:08:43","modified_gmt":"2018-01-20T16:08:43","slug":"how-to-check-your-windows-pc-for-spectre-and-meltdown-vulnerability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/hardware\/123043-how-to-check-your-windows-pc-for-spectre-and-meltdown-vulnerability","title":{"rendered":"How to check your Windows PC for Spectre and Meltdown vulnerability"},"content":{"rendered":"

The recent discovery of a major chip vulnerability has exposed millions of devices to potential attacks, and manufacturers are rushing to fix the issues.<\/p>\n

The vulnerability is related to speculative execution \u2013 a mechanism CPUs rely on to keep their pipelines filled with instructions so they can be as efficient as possible.<\/p>\n

The vulnerabilities apply to AMD and Intel processors, and the security patches implemented to fix them can drastically slow down your computer.<\/p>\n

Operating systems are also releasing patches for security holes or to restrict access to the vulnerabilities.<\/p>\n

If unresolved, the Spectre and Meltdown attacks can leverage the vulnerability to gain access to your personal files and passwords.<\/p>\n

InSpectre<\/h3>\n

Protecting your device against Spectre and Meltdown attacks requires updating your BIOS and operating system with versions that include relevant security patches.<\/p>\n

To determine whether your system is vulnerable, the Gibson Research Centre has released a tool called InSpectre.<\/p>\n

The file is compatible with any version of Windows and is 124kB big. It does not require a full installation and can be run as a standalone executable.<\/p>\n

InSpectre also determines whether the security patches to fix the vulnerability have impacted the performance of your system, and includes the option to disable Spectre or Meltdown protection.<\/p>\n

The option to disable the protection may be useful for systems which have become significantly slower, but doing this will expose them to attacks.<\/p>\n

Visit the download page<\/strong><\/a> on Gibson Research Centre\u2019s website to find out more.<\/p>\n

\"InSpectre<\/a><\/p>\n

Secure your device<\/h3>\n

Once you have run the tool, InSpectre will notify you of any vulnerabilities and will suggest a course of action.<\/p>\n

Following the guidelines outlined by InSpectre, users may be required to update their operating systems and BIOS or CPU microcode firmware to protect themselves.<\/p>\n

This can be done by visiting your PC manufacturer\u2019s website and accessing the latest version of your BIOS, which will hopefully include the security patches.<\/p>\n

If future solutions to vulnerabilities are found, the InSpectre utility will be updated to reflect them.<\/p>\n

It is important to note that in order to exploit Meltdown or Spectre, an attacker must be able to execute code on your device.<\/p>\n

This means an attacker would typically have to exploit another vulnerability to run malware that lets them gain code execution privileges on your system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The recent discovery of a major chip vulnerability has exposed millions of devices to potential attacks, and manufacturers are rushing to fix the issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":226,"featured_media":123045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_enabled":true,"_sma_x_custom_text":"","_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[25617,25583,19487],"class_list":["post-123043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-inspectre","tag-meltdown","tag-spectre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/226"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}