Microsoft Out-of-Band Security Update for "Meltdown" and "Spectre" CPU Flaws
Microsoft released out-of-band security updates to address what are being referred to as "Meltdown" and "Spectre" CPU flaws, reported to be affecting almost all CPUs released since 1995.
As explained by John Hazen, Principal PM Lead, Microsoft Edge in
Mitigating speculative execution side-channel attacks in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer, Microsoft released
KB4056890 with mitigations for the class of vulnerabilities which can be exploited as described in Security Advisory
ADV180002. These techniques can be used via JavaScript code running in the browser, which may allow attackers to gain access to memory in the attacker’s process.
The January security release consists of security updates for the following software:
- Internet Explorer
- Microsoft Edge
- Microsoft Windows
The updates address Elevation of Privilege and Information Disclosure. The related CVEs are CVE-2017-5753, CVE-2017-5715, and CVE-2017-5754 See Lawrence Abrams
article at Bleeping Computer which includes a list of vendors official notices, patches and updates, including Amazon, AMD, Apple, Chrome, Intel, Mozilla, nVidia and more.
Important Note: The update released is incompatible with a small number of anti-virus products and may result in BSOD's. As a result, the update is only being released to devices running antivirus software from partners who have confirmed their software is compatible with the January 2018 Windows operating system security update. See
Important information regarding the Windows security updates released on January 3, 2018 and anti-virus software for additional information.
For more information about the updates released today, see
https://portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-us/security-guidance/summary. Updates can be sorted by OS from the search box. Information about the update for Windows 10 is available at
Windows 10 Update history.
References