What's new in InSpectre release 8
Apr 12, 2018
- Now shows whether an Intel microcode patch is (ever) available for Spectre:
- Intel has finished designing microcode update patches for its processors. On April 2nd, 2018, they announced that processors that have not yet been patches will never be patched. Their full statement is available in this PDF document. In that document, Intel specifies which of their many processors do have patches and which of their more recent processors will never receive updated firmware. Now that the industry has this information, this 8th release of InSpectre incorporates that list of CPUIDs and displays whether microcode firmware updates exist for the system's Intel CPU.
New in InSpectre release 7 (Mar 8, 2018)
- Added the display of the system's CPUID . . .:
- Microsoft will be making Intel (and perhaps AMD?) processor microcode patches available for the most persistent Spectre Variant 2 vulnerability. These will become available over time as they become available from Intel and they will apparently need to be manually installed by interested Windows users. It is not yet clear whether Microsoft will be willing or interested in making these patches available for earlier versions of its Windows operating systems, but we can hope.
- The patches are applicable to specific CPU models only, which are identified by each chip's “CPUID.” For this reason, InSpectre now prominently displays the system's processor CPUID at the top of its system summary.
New in InSpectre release 6 (Jan 28, 2018)
- Worked around a Microsoft bug and more:
- Users of an earlier version of Windows 10 (version 1703 ‑ the non-Fall Creator's Update) reported that InSpectre did not believe that their system had been patched for the Spectre vulnerability. Upon analysis, a bug was discovered in that version of Windows which affected the way 32-bit applications, such as InSpectre, viewed the system. This was apparently fixed in the later “Fall Creator's Update” (version 1709) but not in the earlier version. A 64-bit “probe” was added to the 6th release of InSpectre to work around this bug in version 1703 so that InSpectre would accurately reflect any system's true protection.
New in InSpectre release 5 (Jan 19, 2018)
- Earlier releases of InSpectre did not encourage copying the program's displays out of the application. Any region of the results can now be marked with the mouse and copied to the system's shared clipboard by using the standard Ctrl-C key combination. The application's system menu (under the small Spectre icon at the upper-left corner of the application window) also now contains a “Copy to Clipboard” option which will either copy a marked region or the entire textual content if no region is marked for copying.
New in InSpectre release 4 (Jan 18, 2018)
- When InSpectre is launched with the string “probe” in its command line, its Windows user interface will be suppressed. The application will assess its hosting system's status, then immediately terminate itself returning a decimal exitcode which encodes eight “trouble bits” itemizing trouble. Therefore, an exitcode of zero (0) is returned only by a fully secure system.
New in InSpectre release 2 (Jan 17, 2018)
- This second release hides its use of the registry key that was upsetting so many anti-virus scanners. A pass through Virus Total shows that made a huge difference. And that confusing paragraph was rewritten into two, which are now presented more correctly.