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Microsoft's 'Meltdown' Patch For Windows 10 Contains a Fatal Flaw (bleepingcomputer.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the fishing-chips dept.

An anonymous reader quotes BleepingComputer: Microsoft's patches for the Meltdown vulnerability have had a fatal flaw all these past months, according to Alex Ionescu, a security researcher with cyber-security firm Crowdstrike. Only patches for Windows 10 versions were affected, the researcher wrote today in a tweet. Microsoft quietly fixed the issue on Windows 10 Redstone 4 (v1803), also known as the April 2018 Update, released on Monday.

"Welp, it turns out the Meltdown patches for Windows 10 had a fatal flaw: calling NtCallEnclave returned back to user space with the full kernel page table directory, completely undermining the mitigation," Ionescu wrote. Ionescu pointed out that older versions of Windows 10 are still running with outdated and bypass-able Meltdown patches.

Wednesday Microsoft issued a security update, but it wasn't to backport the "fixed" Meltdown patches for older Windows 10 versions. Instead, the emergency update fixed a vulnerability in the Windows Host Compute Service Shim (hcsshim) library (CVE-2018-8115) that allows an attacker to remotely execute code on vulnerable systems.

6 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Windows and "free to play" by stikves · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Windows 10 update system feels like "free to play" games, where they actually make you pay more than what you would have paid outright if you made an upfront purchase.

    While I like the some of the new features (linux support, more responsive UI, remote xbox streaming, etc), they make sure unwanted cruft comes with it, since you can no longer choose to include or not include many components. Also they took away the excellent Windows Media Center which still has no free alternative.

    It is now too late, but I wish we stayed with the WIndows 7 model, where a purchase meant a purchase not a subscription.

    1. Re:Windows and "free to play" by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 4, Informative

      I wish we stayed with the WIndows 7 model, where a purchase meant a purchase not a subscription.

      I haven't yet seen a monthly bill for my copy of Windows. People keep mistaking the new Windows model as some radical departure, which it really is not. All it means is that Microsoft is doing away with UPGRADE purchases. You're still required to purchase a new copy of Windows if you buy a new computer.

      You get a license for the lifetime of the computer, not your lifetime. So, it's really not as different in reality as "the last version of Window" sounds. I think Microsoft just realized that most consumers didn't purchase upgrades anyhow (only "upgrading" when a new computer was purchased), and maintaining several OS lines at the same time was a pain, so in reality, it's more of a cost-saving measure for them by simply keeping everyone on the same branch of Windows.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  2. Two similar errors on two different versions by klingens · · Score: 4, Interesting

    First they totally fscked up the Windows 7/Server 2008 Meltdown "fix" allowing every user program access any RAM area they wanted
    https://www.theregister.co.uk/...
    And now again they fsck it all up in another version as well by returning the data the patch was supposed to not return. But the way they did fsck it up was totally different than the Windows 7 way. They have so many fuckups, they create different ones for each OS version, cause one fuckup is not enough. Code reuse with audited, well written code would be too easy for two OS kernels that are so much the same obviously. No 7 and 10 are not different. Still the same kernel where even many drivers work fine the same.

    These clowns are too stupid to write any OS for more than a non-programmable calculator.

  3. Re:Worse than containing a potential flaw... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think Microsoft views disabling servers as less worse than leaving them with a security problem. Just sucks for us since my company's web site is down after apply new Microsoft updates. I'm probably going to lose my job over this which sucks, but I did put in writing in an email that our staging systems wouldn't boot after installing the latest Windows updates.

  4. Re:Worse than containing a potential flaw... by gweihir · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The thing that really surprises me is that MS is not getting any better at producing software. This is still the same incompetence that could routinely be observed back when MSDOS got patched. They blunder and bumble and mess up, and they still have the by far largest market-share on the desktop and a significant one on the server. Are their customers really this fundamentally stupid?

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  5. Microsoft's downfall began... by Kaenneth · · Score: 4, Informative

    Microsoft's downfall began when they fired most of their QA staff.

    Everything has gone to shit since.

    http://www.businessinsider.com...

    Satya Nadella has fucked things up, but it's not too late to fire him.