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Windows 7 & older -- update patch (warning)

That's exactly why I keep my production PCs offline most of the time. I administer patches as one of my duties at my day job. My co-worker just IMed me to tell me that he just read up on it and the solution for this one is to disable hyperthreading...which will cut your performance in half, basically. lol I haven't read up on it to verify.
 
There was big update today, but so I guess this is something completely different then.
Could not read the whole article, as I'm no subscriber, but I guess there will be lots to be find about this elsewhere too.
 
How does one acquire this bug ? What are the most likely sources and things to do, if any, to minimize ? Does this come through an automatic update that can be turned off ? What if I only access email with known safe respondents, and only use a few limited music-related sites like this one, and known vendors like Spitfire, Sonovox, etc. and do not surf.

Bob
 
Ah shit, I can't read those articles. Technically, I'm a peasant. And I have Windows 7.

What can I do to avoid a catastrophe here? I hope the solution doesn't involve moving off Windows 7!!!
 
You've got, what, a year of support left? Might as well switch to Windows 10, as it's inevitable.

Going to make it last as long as I can, then! No, it is more the fact that some of the hardware on my machine won't work with anything higher than Win7. And that shit is going to be costly to upgrade. Makes me sad.

Just so that I can understand, there's an update for now which takes care of it?
 
Going to make it last as long as I can, then! No, it is more the fact that some of the hardware on my machine won't work with anything higher than Win7. And that shit is going to be costly to upgrade. Makes me sad.

Just so that I can understand, there's an update for now which takes care of it?
I find MS doesn't usually announce issues until they have a fix for them.

I'm with you on not wanting to update to 10 on my music computer. The other ones? Sure, not a problem.
 
I find MS doesn't usually announce issues until they have a fix for them.

I'm with you on not wanting to update to 10 on my music computer. The other ones? Sure, not a problem.

I think I had disabled updates. A few years ago people recommended this, as I'm fairly sure they were trying to shove a Win10 upgrade down my throad. But I guess I should check it now. My computer is probably ripe for plundering.
 
I think I had disabled updates. A few years ago people recommended this, as I'm fairly sure they were trying to shove a Win10 upgrade down my throad. But I guess I should check it now. My computer is probably ripe for plundering.
The I always set it to ask me. Then I go through them and check to see what they are for. I haven't seen a Win10 update in a year or two. Though if you google it, you can still get the free upgrade. However, it is to the normal Win10 and not the Pro version. I keep turning off the automatic updates on my Win10 laptop and it still continues to run updates. So I'm not sure if I trust it yet with my music machine that has picky software on it.
 
The I always set it to ask me. Then I go through them and check to see what they are for. I haven't seen a Win10 update in a year or two. Though if you google it, you can still get the free upgrade. However, it is to the normal Win10 and not the Pro version. I keep turning off the automatic updates on my Win10 laptop and it still continues to run updates. So I'm not sure if I trust it yet with my music machine that has picky software on it.

Ah crap. So if I upgrade from a Win7 Pro version, it wouldn't bump me to Win10 Pro? Another cost.

Tomorrow's job is to make sure my computer is updated enough to survive another year!

BTW what are general impressions of Win10 vs Win7 when it comes to music? I had this feeling it would have more bloatware, but I don't really know why I was thinking this.
 
That's exactly why I keep my production PCs offline most of the time. I administer patches as one of my duties at my day job. My co-worker just IMed me to tell me that he just read up on it and the solution for this one is to disable hyperthreading...which will cut your performance in half, basically. lol I haven't read up on it to verify.
Essentially, yes. The POCs for the zombieLoad exploit are very academic currently would be very hard to pull off in the wild / real world. I'm not aware of any currently known exploits that uses it in the real world yet, but I might be wrong. The simplified version is that basically you have to be on the same core as a hyperthreaded process sharing that core, and to use the exploit to cause a slow leak of contents of the process you are monitoring on the other thread. So it's not very practical yet, but I clearly need to do more reading. Disabling hyper threading would definitely mitigate the issue, at the cost of a heavy loss of performance
 
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Essentially, yes. The POCs for the zombieLoad exploit academic currently would be very hard to pull off in the wild / real world. I'm not aware of any currently known exports that uses in the real world yet, but I might be wrong. The simplified version is that basically you have to be on the same core as a hyperthreaded process sharing that core, and to use the exploit to cause a slow leak of contents of the process you are monitoring on the other thread. So it's not very practical yet, but I clearly need to do more reading. Disabling hyper threading would definitely mitigate the issue, at the cost of a heavy loss of performance
Thanks for the info, Whiskers!
 
You've got, what, a year of support left? Might as well switch to Windows 10, as it's inevitable.
It's no small benefit keeping one's DAW workstation offline. I haven't had an update since on my W7 PC since 2017 and never worry about any of the security issues. I'll switch to 10 if and when I want a product or feature that requires it. Not before. Offline, security risks, MS "end of life" timetables or whatever simply don't matter.
 
Ah crap. So if I upgrade from a Win7 Pro version, it wouldn't bump me to Win10 Pro? Another cost.
I think you could probably upgrade for free from Pro to Pro, and I certainly did this for free after the official free upgrade finished, although it's a while ago now.
 
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