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Meltdown, Spectre Patches May Brick Old AMD PCs.
Some AMD system owners reported that the latest Windows patches, which include the fixes for the Meltdown and Spectre CPU flaws, have been bricking their computers. Following these reports, Microsoft decided to halt the updates until it tracks down the issues and makes the necessary changes.



Microsoft has begun issuing Meltdown and Spectre fixes in its cumulative Windows update, but some owners of computers with AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPUs started complaining that the update made their machines unbootable.

To make matters worse, the fact that the update was mandatory meant that there was no easy way to disable the updates, either.

Spectre mitigations arrive in latest Nvidia GPU drivers.
It's not just CPUs that are impacted by Spectre, as graphics giant Nvidia has released a new set of drivers that contain some mitigations against the side-channel vulnerability.

In a short security bulletin, Nvidia said it had no reason to believe it was affected by the largely Intel-specific Meltdown, but its entire GeForce, Quadro, NVS, Tesla, and Grid products were hit by Spectre.

Updated drivers for GeForce, Quadro, and NVS are available now, with all Tesla and Grid drivers to be updated before the end of the month.

After this initial release, Nvidia said it would work with its partners on further mitigations.

Nvidia updates graphics drivers to protect against Spectre CPU a.ttacks.
The Game Ready driver Nvidia released earlier this week for GeForce graphics cards ostensibly added new features announced at CES, like Nvidia FreeStyle filters, Ansel screenshot improvements, and ShadowPlay Highlights for Fortnite, Crossout, and Elex. But it quietly held another purpose, too: Protecting your data from hackers. Nvidia has patched its graphics cards to protect against the devastating Spectre attack that shook up the computing world over the past week.

Like its sister flaw, Meltdown, Spectre exploits how computer processors handle a task called “speculative execution” to gain access to sensitive data stored in your operating system’s protected kernel. But while Meltdown could be resolved by operating system patches, Spectre is harder to smack down, requiring individual software vendors to update potentially vulnerable applications. Nvidia discovered its GPU display driver software can fall prey to the Spectre CPU exploit—unsurprising, given how deeply graphics card software digs into your operating system kernel—and is pushing these updates to strengthen against it.

To be clear, Nvidia graphics hardware is not vulnerable to Meltdown or Spectre. This is a software patch to help protect against exploits against CPUs from Intel, AMD, and ARM.

These new drivers include initial mitigations against one of two known Spectre variants, CVE-2017-5753. As far as the second Spectre flaw, “Nvidia’s initial analysis indicates that the Nvidia GPU Display Driver is potentially affected by this variant,” the company says. “Nvidia expects to work together with its ecosystem partners on future updates for this variant.”