Microsoft has officially published a Windows patch that will disable Intel’s Spectre vulnerability fix. Why? Because Intel’s patch has been causing more problems than it solves, leaving many computers simply unusable.
Intel has already advised its customers to stop installing its Spectre Variant 2 patch, seeing that it causes computers to reboot for no reason. This move from Microsoft is simply in place to provide a fix in the event that people have accidentally installed the Intel patch (since it also comes bundled in with Microsoft’s security patches).
Microsoft is also providing instructions for manually disabling the Intel patch for advanced users. In the event that the user doesn’t want to install anything new and is comfortable with editing the system registry.
Disabling the Spectre patch is a big risk on Microsoft’s part, but it seems to be a carefully calculated move. There has been no confirmed cyberattack using the vulnerability as of yet; which means that people are relatively “safe” for now.
Then again, there is the fear that the Chinese government has had a head start on developing a cyberweapon through Spectre. Since Intel had apparently warned Chinese companies about the vulnerability before anyone else. Although, that doesn’t seem to have resulted in any action from any party at the moment.
[Source: Microsoft]
