How to test MDS (Zombieload) patch status on Windows systems

[Abarbarian]

PowerShell script tells you if you're Windows OS is safe from MDS attacks.

To safeguard systems, users must install Intel CPU microcode updates, but also OS-level updates. Microsoft, along with other OS makers, have already released OS patches today.
Intel has released microcode updates to motherboard and OEM firmware vendors already, and they should be made available to users as part of OEM firmware updates in the future.

Microsoft May 2019 Patch Tuesday arrives with fix for Windows zero-day, MDS attacks

The two headliners of this month's patches are CVE-2019-0863, a zero-day vulnerability exploited in the wild, and ADV190013, a security advisory for dealing with the latest wave of Intel CPU flaws that came to light only a few hours before.

Tracked as CVE-2019-0863 and discovered by security researchers from PolarBear and Palo Alto Networks, this vulnerability has been used in the wild by hackers to elevate access on compromised systems from a regular account to one with admin access.

Microsoft said that customers would need two types of updates. The first is firmware microcode updates that they must get from their either Intel or OEMs (device providers).
Second, there are also OS updates, which Microsoft released today, for both Windows and Windows Server. Patches for HoloLens and SQL Server have also been released.

An additional step to protect against MDS attacks would be to disable Intel CPU support for Hyper-Threading (SMT), but doing this would result in a bigger performance hit on Windows systems.

Oh and penguins need to watch out too.

Linux vs. Zombieload

Zombieload, another Intel processor side-channel attack, just like Meltdown and Spectre before it, poses a security threat for Linux systems.

 

[Abraham Andres Luna]

I wonder when my distro will be patched