Windows 10 gets new security updates for Spectre vulnerabilities

Microsoft rolled out 5 important security updates to all the supported Windows 10 versions. All these patches feature the same changelog and focus on making your computer bulletproof against Spectre security vulnerabilities.

More specifically, the updates block the following threats:

• Spectre Variant 3a (CVE-2018-3640: “Rogue System Register Read (RSRE)”)
• Spectre Variant 4 (CVE-2018-3639: “Speculative Store Bypass (SSB)”)
• L1TF (CVE-2018-3620, CVE-2018-3646: “L1 Terminal Fault”)

If you’re interested in downloading the latest security patches for Windows 10, here are the update IDs that you need to look for:

• KB4346087 for Windows 10 version 1607
• KB4346086 for Windows 10 version 1703
• KB4346085 for Windows 10 version 1709
• KB4346084 for Windows 10 version 1803
• KB4465065 for Windows 10 version 1809

You can install these updates automatically via Windows Update or you can download them from the Microsoft Update Catalog.

As Microsoft explains on the official support pages of these updates, the latest patches also include Intel microcode updates that were released for Windows 10 at the time of release to manufacturing (RTM).

Keep in mind that mitigation is turned off for Spectre Variant 4 (CVE-2018-3639: “Speculative Store Bypass (SSB)”). In order to make sure your computer is fully protected against this threat, you need to enable Spectre mitigation for Windows client and Windows Server.

Known issues

There are no known issues related to this update. The install process should go smoothly and you should not encounter any technical issues after installing the update.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Spectre security vulnerabilities, you can check out the posts below:

• Download InSpectre to check for CPU performance issues