2018 was a lousy year for the security of our computers. At the beginning of that year, two of the worst vulnerabilities in the history of computing, Meltdown and Specter, were revealed , affecting 100% of users, as they were failures present in the CPUs themselves. These vulnerabilities could be used to steal confidential information from any PC, but the worst is not that, but their correction implies a significant loss of performance in PCs. Such is the complexity of these failures that, two and a half years later, Microsoft it is still releasing updates to fix them on Windows, such as the new KB4497165 and KB4558130.
This same week, Microsoft has released two new important updates to continue solving, in the best possible way, the vulnerabilities of Meltdown and Specter.
Two updates to make the CPU more secure
Both the KB4497165 patch and the KB4558130 update are the same, but each is intended for a different version of Windows. On the one hand, the KB4497165 update is primarily intended for users of Windows 10 versions 1903 and 1909 . On the other hand, the KB4558130 patch is prepared for users of the latest version of Windows, the 2004, May 2020 Update .
In total, these two updates correct 4 vulnerabilities that, until today, had not yet been fixed:
- CVE-2019-11091
- CVE-2018-12126
- CVE-2018-12127
- CVE-2018-12130
Not all processors are vulnerable to Meltdown and Specter. Users who have CPUs of the last two generations in their PCs need not worry, since these bugs were corrected at the architecture level. But all other users are affected. And to know if our PC is affected, and we must install these updates, we must consult the following list of microcodes .
How to download and install
It would not be difficult for Windows Update to recognize each user’s CPU and download patches if necessary. However, unfortunately, this is not the case. Microcode updates for Microsoft CPUs are not automatically downloaded and installed through Windows Update. And they don’t come as “optional updates” within Microsoft’s update system either. If we want to be sure we will have to download and install them manually.
We can find the microcode update for Windows 10 May 2020 Update at this link. And if we have an older version of Windows 10, we can find this patch here . We will simply have to choose the version of our operating system (32 or 64 bits) and download the corresponding update. Once downloaded, we install it on the PC, restart and that’s it. Our CPU will now be a bit more secure.
We should not have problems installing updates, unless we do not have a compatible CPU or download an update that does not correspond to our operating system.
KB4571744, an optional Windows update packed with fixes
Windows 10 microcode updates aren’t the only ones to hit the operating system recently. A few days ago, Microsoft also released a new optional update for its operating system, KB4571744.
This new patch comes with a large number of fixes for Windows 10 May 2020 Update, such as the end of the problems with SSDs. But, in addition, it also fixes a large number of bugs and problems scattered throughout the operating system that, since the release of the 2004 version of Windows, have done nothing but annoy users.
If you have problems, be sure to also install this patch, which can be found in the “optional updates” section of Windows Update.
