Microsoft is today rolling out a new emergency software update to Windows 10 operating system. The update comes with one important change, Microsoft is actually removing the patch for vulnerabilities released earlier this month to improve the performance of affected hardware. The update is available for all supported versions of Windows 10. It’s worth noting the update is optional and was not pushed.
Last week, Intel advised the OS vendors and cloud service providers to roll back the patch for Spectre vulnerabilities. Intel identified a bug in a patch for Spectre Variant 2 security flaw where the system would slow down over time. In a press release, Intel admitted that the firmware update issued by them was causing issues on a number of hardware configurations including the high-end processors like Kaby Lake.
Some users also experienced random reboots which resulted in a backlash from the industry, Intel apparently had no other choice than to pull their firmware updates and work on a fix which has been already discovered.
Microsoft’s security updates for Windows which were released earlier this month also included Intel’s own update. Intel reached out to Microsoft and they both decided to roll back the patch with today’s software update for the operating system. Since the software giant has disabled the Spectre Variant 2 patch, the performance of the affected systems should improve.
Microsoft in a blog post explained that it’s not aware of any attacks aimed at the Spectre Variant 2 vulnerability. The company is, however, waiting for a firmware update from Intel which would again fix the vulnerability without affecting the performance. It appears that the update isn’t shipped via Windows Update yet, but it can be downloaded from here.
