Stopping Spectre and Meltdown in their tracks

I’m a little rattled by the ongoing revelations about processor (in)securities. I have a four-year-old PC with an Intel Core i5-4450 (Haswell) chip. What steps can I take to protect myself against the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities? FRANK ELDON

Rob Mead-Green replies: We’ll assume that you know what these vulnerabilities are – flaws so fundamental that virtually every PC out there is affected by at least one vulnerability. Start by verifying that your chip is affected by one or both vulnerabilities with the help of Ashampoo’s free Spectre Meltdown CPU Checker (http://bit.ly/ashamspectre). Once confirmed, make sure your web

browsers are fully updated to close the door on one type of Spectre-based attack. Also check that Windows has also been patched against both threats – Windows 7, 8 and 10 should have received fixes dated around 11th January. If you’ve not received any updates since the turn of the year, your anti-virus will need updating to let Windows know it’s compatible (and stop it blocking updates). Contact your anti-virus vendor if this doesn’t happen – if necessary, you’ll need to switch to another security program. Intel chips will also need a microcode patch. The older your processor, the longer you’ll have to wait and see if Intel will provide one. Intel has, by this stage, released a patch for the Haswell chip in Frank’s PC. Nevertheless, there’s one more hurdle to overcome: Intel isn’t deploying the patch. Instead, you’re relying on your system or motherboard manufacturer to provide this as part of a BIOS firmware update. Frank’s motherboard manufacturer – ASRock – hadn’t deployed any updates for older motherboards at time of writing, but keep checking back (and keep an eye on official user forums too) for updates.