Phenquestions
Most of you must have read about the Spectre and Meltdown CPU vulnerabilities and wondering if there is anything you need to do to protect yourself against these CPU vulnerabilities. Microsoft has released a PowerShell cmdlet that lets you find out if your Windows computer is affected by Meltdown and Spectre CPU Vulnerabilities and suggested ways on how to protect your system from it.
Find out if your Windows is affected by Meltdown & Spectre
Run PowerShell as administrator and execute the following commands one after the other:
PS> # Save the current execution policy so it can be reset PS> $SaveExecutionPolicy = Get-ExecutionPolicy PS> Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope Currentuser PS> CD C:\ADV180002\SpeculationControl PS> Import-Module .\SpeculationControl.psd1 PS> Get-SpeculationControlSettings PS> # Reset the execution policy to the original state PS> Set-ExecutionPolicy $SaveExecutionPolicy -Scope Currentuser
This will install, activate an additional module and enable protection.
Check the output and see if all the elements show a value of True. That shows that your Windows is protected. If it shows False, it means that your system is vulnerable and you need to fix those issues.
You can later on restore the default ExecutionPolicy setting by running executing this Set-ExecutionPolicy Default command.
For more information, you may visit Microsoft.
Protect Windows against Meltdown & Spectre
US-CERT has said - “Replace CPU hardware. The underlying vulnerability is primarily caused by CPU architecture design choices. Fully removing the vulnerability requires replacing vulnerable CPU hardware.”
However, there are some basic precautions you can take to protect your Windows against Meltdown and Spectre CPU Vulnerabilities:
- Ensure that your device firmware and the operating system is fully patched with the latest available updates.
- Ensure that all your installed software, especially web browsers, are updated to their latest versions. You may use a Software Update Checker.
- Enable Strict Site Isolation in Chrome and prevent JavaScript from loading in your browser.
Ashampoo Spectre Meltdown CPU Checker will check if your Windows computer is vulnerable easily.
Stay safe!
