How to protect your PC against the major ‘Meltdown’ CPU security flaw

www.theverge.com ^ | Jan 4, 2018, 8:12am EST | By Tom Warren

[lgjhn23]

“...Mine’s about a yr newer than yours. Might try it. Just wish there was a way to revert if needed....”

I run a backup with Carbon Copy Cloner before I do any update and save it to an external drive. IF, for any reason, I needed to revert back, I can restore to my previous backup. I’ve never actually had to do it...at least not so far, but I believe it would work if I needed to.
FWIW, my machine is a 27” iMac 2.93 Ghz I7 w/32gb of ram and an updated 2TB hard drive. I’ve had no issues with High Sierra 10.13.2 on this older machine, but like I said, I’m not compiling mountains of hard core raw computer data either...just email, web browsing and real-time streaming of stock data. However, on any given weekday while monitoring the stock markets, I’ll have as many as 7 desktops open at any one given time. I have an another external Asus 27” monitor in vertical mode tied on as well. To date, I’ve not had any stability issues with the OSX.

[Bob434]

[[Linux users tend to be more aware of what they are doing.]]

Ha- not me lol- I’m oblivious mostly-

[[or perhaps the OS vendors or open source Linux kernel people will have to do it.]]

That would indicate that we’ll need both an intel patch and os patch? The intel one I believe is what will ‘slow machines down’ some suggest by a possible 50%? (I’ve read anywhere between 5% and 50%)

Ugggh- what a mess-

[[ I think the patching will be in the kernel, but I’m not sure how you stop the potentially malicious behavior]]

I’m Gonna have to watch the linux blogs to see what they are saying about this- I’m wondering that if linux comes up with a patch, if that might be all that is necessary, foregoing the intel patch, if I use only linux for all itnernet activity (although i do dual boot- and use windows 7- but try to not to go online with windows - and only to known good sites only when I do-

[[ think the patching will be in the kernel, but I’m not sure how you stop the potentially malicious behavior.]]

I don’t know much about these things, but it would seem there should be a way to alert whenever an exe or elf is about to execute? But i suppose malicious code attempts to bypass the alerts? Would be nice if there was a fool proof way to prevent all EXE’s and EFL’s from executing without explicit permission from computer owner-

I dropped windows as my online os awhile back because I was always getting redirected when doing searches online and getting sent to malicious sites or compromised sites- and just got sick of always having to secure the os just to be online- now this has happened- and it’s sad hat it’s intel related, not just os related- that changes the game- now even linux may not be as safe as it was-

It’s a shame that people have to ruin other people’s online experiences like with this exploit- We all went for a good many years basically able to enjoy online activities without too much concern, but now we’ve got to deal with it and will be affected by it-

[palmer]

I don’t know much about these things, but it would seem there should be a way to alert whenever an exe or elf is about to execute?

The problem with that is there are dozens or more running normally. So if you have to give permission to each one, there would be a lot of clicking of the "go ahead" button. Some antivirus vendors do a whitelist where they add all the known "good" EXEs or ELFs. But that is difficult to maintain and control. For one thing, anytime you install new SW the list would need to be updated. Also the bad guys know where the list is and may try to change it.

[Bob434]

yeah i guess there is no easy solution- I just wonder if we’re getting to a point where hackers can throttle our computers to a point where we’re forced to essentially downgrade the speed because of a vulnerability- how slow will the go? I mean how many times will something like this happen where we’re forced to slow our computers by applying ‘fixes’?

I understand most causal users won’t notice a slowdown but those that depend on a computer for speed, they will be affected more- it’s just aggravating that intel knew about this issue and kept it quiet in order to sell ‘faster computers’ than amd-

Anyways- did you apply the intel patch? Is it out yet? I looked in my windows 7 windows update panel, but didn’t see anything resembling a patch for the issue?

I upgraded my main os linux- hopefully that had the ‘fix’ but I don’t know for sure if it did or not-

[RightGeek]

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