Microsoft Tackles Speculative Execution Security with New PowerShell Script
Microsoft recently released a PowerShell script for automatically executing WinRE updates, addressing a bypass vulnerability in the Windows Bitlocker hardware encryption feature.
Today, Microsoft has unveiled a new script to further mitigate a variety of security issues, specifically those related to speculative execution side-channel attacks, which can only be alleviated but not fully remedied.
Speculative execution side-channel vulnerabilities are security issues present in modern processors; they have been resolved in Intel’s new processors, while older processors require patches.
Similar to previous patches, these mitigation measures might impact processor performance; hence, they are primarily recommended for businesses that prioritize security to address such issues.
Microsoft has released a new script to help users mitigate Windows 10/11 speculative execution-related security concerns. This script continues with the KB4074629 update release, allowing enterprise IT administrators to examine the side-channel attack mitigation status and take action based on actual needs.
The vulnerabilities covered include but are not limited to, branch target injection, bounds check bypass, malicious data cache loading, speculative new bypass, and speculative new storage bypass.
Microarchitectural vulnerabilities encompass data sampling from uncacheable memory, store buffer data sampling, load port data sampling, and fill buffer sampling.
Regarding memory-mapped MMIO: shared buffer data reading, shared buffer data sampling, special register buffer sampling, and register writing.
Microsoft’s SpeculationControl PowerShell script assists in determining which vulnerabilities are in a mitigated state, with the option to enable or disable mitigation.
