Spectre/Meltdown bios updates

[mackerel]

I spent the weekend, on and off, checking and doing bios updates across my home systems. Mixed bag:

Mobos:
Asrock Z370-Pro4 - update available
Asrock X99 Extreme3 - update available
Asus B350M-A - not available
Asus X299 TUF mark 2 - update available
Asus X370-Pro - (not tried, assumed not available like B350M-A from description)
Asus Z170 Maximus VIII Hero - update available
Asus Z170I pro gaming - update available
MSI Z170A gaming pro - not available does include ME update for SA-00086

Laptops:
Asus FX503VD - update available, but does NOT include ME update for SA-00086

The two AMD systems do have very recent BIOS, but the description says AGESA 1002a which is presumably to improve support for the 2000 series CPUs. They had said there would be updates for Sepctre, but not yet it seems.

 

[satrow]

I've seen a couple of reports recently from people who've had BIOS updates emailed to them after querying the makers directly for Ivy and Haswell 'boards, iirc (I haven't checked the topic yet today).

Added: 2 users, 3 'boards, MSI (Haswell), ASRock and Gigabyte (both Z77 Ivy).

 

[mackerel]

Forgot to say, for those not familiar with SA-00086 it is the Intel ME vulnerability of late last year.

I also had a quick look at some of my other Haswell era systems, but I think they too low end they'll never get the update, but MS were talking about implementing microcode at OS level so that might still be an avenue. Last time I looked not even all X99 boards were going to get the update, depending on the manufacturer.

 

[mackerel]

Now this is interesting. I notice there's new bios for the AM4 boards. Since I'm currently on the X370 system, I did a sepctre check before updating and... it shows I already have the fix? Why did the B350 on same bios description (AGESA 1002a) not report the same? The X370 system does have the April Win10 update... the B350 system is still on FCU and currently ramless so not easy to test without raiding another system. Note it is a candidate for selling on so I've been stealing bits from it. I guess I'll have to pull some ram from elsewhere to get it running again...

 

[mackerel]

To follow up on my previous post, I've done a bios update to latest on the 1600 system, no change to Spectre status. Vulnerable. Installed Win10 April update. Not vulnerable. So it is Windows... I recall there was a plan to implement the protection in loadable microcode for Intel CPUs, and have to wonder if they implemented it for Ryzen.