Trying To Fix Windows Security Problems Breaks Security Software
Microsoft is having a tough time coming out with good patches for the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. The main trouble is, these patches cause third-party anti-malware software to malfunction, and so the vendors of those products have to rush out their own patches to work with the fixes <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/08/meltdown_fix_security_problems/>.
On Tue, 9 Jan 2018 13:50:30 +1300, I wrote:
Microsoft is having a tough time coming out with good patches for the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. The main trouble is, these patches cause third-party anti-malware software to malfunction, and so the vendors of those products have to rush out their own patches to work with the fixes <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/08/meltdown_fix_security_problems/>.
This is proving a bit more troublesome than thought <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/09/meltdown_patch_anti_malware_conflict/>: * Protecting the kernel may break the functionality of some anti-malware products altogether. * Having third parties set a Registry key to tell Windows to activate the kernel protection may have some unintended consequences.
On Wed, 10 Jan 2018, at 15:31, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
This is proving a bit more troublesome than thought
Ayup. Sounds like other commercial software is having trouble too... There's at least one VPN client broken as a result. Seems there are some problems with various reverse-engineering-prevention methods, and in some clever[1] routines used to check licensing status too. Tune in again next week, for the next episode of "the internet is a mess, and humans suck at computers" Hey in other news, I've really appreciated the constantly interesting posts from you and Peter on this issue over the past few days. Thanks! E [1] https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/25276/why-is-clevern...
On Tue, 9 Jan 2018 13:50:30 +1300, I wrote:
Microsoft is having a tough time coming out with good patches for the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities.
It appears the company has got a more reliable patch now. However <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/good-newsbad-news-in-quest-to-get-meltdown-and-spectre-patched/>, If you're unfortunate enough to have installed the previous, bad update and now have a system that crashes on startup, you'll still have to roll back the bad update before you can install the new one. We've read reports that this is indeed possible, but unfortunately, Microsoft only offers generic guidance on troubleshooting blue screen of death crashes, not any specific steps to fix this specific issue.
participants (2)
-
Eric Light -
Lawrence D'Oliveiro