Because of the recent discovery of design flaw in Intel CPUs, Microsoft’s response is a patch that will fix the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerability. After some period of delay, Microsoft has expressed themselves about the upcoming changes, and the fixes that are about to be deployed.
Know it or not, Microsoft has already started the procedure of patching their Windows and fixing the hardware chips around the world. In a recent blog, Terry Myerson, Executive Vice President has stated that the security development has found a successful way of fixing the issue. Since Jan 3, it appears that the whole world is panicking because of the vulnerabilities that have been discovered.
An excellent statement for what I believe is most straightforward to understand is that the silicon exploit could give access information in one software program from another. This means an attacker could extend into a browser with a malicious Javascript which could be quickly deployed through a website or any advertising. As Microsoft stated, he can quickly jump from one browser tab to another and discover the victim’s purpose.
Unlike Haswell or older CPUs, newer silicon used by more modern era PCs can deal with the fix a lot easier than others. This involves 2016 PCs with Kabylake, Skylake or newer CPUs. Microsoft stated this and sadly Haswell will maybe suffer a significant performance drop. The same applies to people using previous versions of Windows like Windows 7 or 8, which are going to struggle the corresponding decrease in performance.
It is quite uncomfortable for gamers to learn it this way, as the performance drop is one of the most significant pain a gamer can have. Sadly, I am running a fourth-generation CPU which is Haswell microarchitecture, and therefore I am tempted to discover the performance drop. I will post here if something unusual is happening.
