The security researchers discovered Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities in early January, and Microsoft was one of the first companies to issue a patch. In the past few months, Microsoft released several patches to mitigate the reported security flaw and keep users protected against both vulnerabilities.
In February, Intel released microcode updates to their OEM partners for CPUs such as Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake and Skylake-based platforms. Microsoft has already rolled out the firmware updates to Windows 10 version 1709 and older.
Today the company is rolling out the Intel firmware update to all supported devices with Windows 10 April 2018 Update (version 1803). It is worth noting that Windows 10 KB4100347 is only shipped to PCs with Intel processors, and it includes more mitigations for the Spectre Variant 2 vulnerability. CVE 2017-5715 (Spectre Variant 2) is one of the vulnerabilities found in Intel CPUs and disclosed earlier this year.
“Based on these efforts, we have now released production microcode updates to our OEM customers and partners for Kaby Lake- and Coffee Lake-based platforms, plus additional Skylake-based platforms. This represents our 6th, 7th and 8th Generation Intel® Core™ product lines as well as our latest Intel® Core™ X-series processor family,” said Navin Shenoy, executive vice president and general manager of the Data Center Group at Intel Corporation.
Microsoft says that the update is available through Windows Update and it would download automatically if you turn on automatic updating in Settings. You can also download it from the Microsoft Update Catalog.
KB4100347 Download Links for Windows 10
Windows 10 KB4100347 Direct Download Links: 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit.
As noted above, this is a standalone update and it can be downloaded through Microsoft Update Catalog. The KB4100347 is only available for Windows 10 April 2018 Update (version 1803) and Windows Server 2016 Version 1803 (Server Core).
Ever since Intel disclosed the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, Microsoft and Intel together rolled out several updates to mitigate them. Microsoft has already fixed the vulnerabilities, but deploying the most recent patch is still recommended. More updates with security fixes are expected to land next month.
Windows 10 April 2018 Update was launched as a manual download on April 30 via Windows Update. While the update comes with several new features, the reports claim that the feature update is causing more harm than good on some hardware configuration. However, a significant number of bugs were reported lately and Microsoft is working on a fix which could land next month.
