Windows 10 Intel Microcode Released To Fix New CPU Security Bugs

Microsoft has released a new batch of Intel microcode updates for Windows 10 20H2, 2004, 1909, and older versions to fix new hardware vulnerabilities discovered in Intel CPUs.

When Intel finds bugs in their CPUs, they release microcode updates that allow operating systems to patch the behavior of the CPU to fix, or at least mitigate, the bug.

Today, an international group of researchers from Graz University of Technology, CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, and the University of Birmingham disclosed new Intel CPU side-channel vulnerabilities called Platypus.

These vulnerabilities reside in Intel’s Running Average Power Limit (RAPL) interface, allowing users to monitor and manage the power consumption of supported CPUs and DRAM memory.

The researchers showed that they could use the RAPL interface to monitor power consumption and deduce what instructions were being performed by a CPU, allowing them to steal sensitive data from memory.

As a demonstration, the researchers released a video that illustrates how they can use the Platypus attack to steal an AES-NI key from protected Intel SGX enclaves.

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Windows 10 Intel microcode updates released

Today, Microsoft released new Intel Microcode updates to fix the latest vulnerabilities, including Platypus, in Intel CPUs.

The additional vulnerabilities fixed as part of this release are:

CVE-2020-8695	Intel® Running Average Power Limit (RAPL) Interface
CVE-2020-8696	Vector Register Sampling active
CVE-2020-8698	Fast store forward predictor

This Intel microcode release adds four additional  CPU families that will receive the latest fixes from Intel.

• Avoton
• Sandy Bridge E, EN, EP, EP4S
• Sandy Bridge E, EP
• Valley View / Baytrail

If your device uses one of the above processors, the associated Intel Microcode update will be offered via Windows Update.

The updates can also be downloaded directly from the Microsoft Catalog using the following links:

• KB4589212: Intel microcode updates for Windows 10, version 2004 and 20H2, and Windows Server, version 2004 and 20H2
• KB4589211: Intel microcode updates for Windows 10, version 1903 and 1909, and Windows Server, version 1903 and 1909
• KB4589208: Intel microcode updates for Windows 10, version 1809 and Windows Server 2019
• KB4589206: Intel microcode updates for Windows 10, version 1803
• KB4589210: Intel microcode updates for Windows 10, version 1607 and Windows Server 2016
• KB4589198: Intel microcode updates for Windows 10, version 1507

While we recommend that users install new Microcode updates, it should be noted that previous updates have caused performance issues on older CPUs or system hangs in the past due to how they mitigated bugs and vulnerabilities.

After installing Intel microcode updates, Windows 10 will require you to restart your computer for the patches to be applied.

Before doing so, be sure to save any documents that may be open before installing these updates.

Checking if you have a supported CPU

To check what CPU is installed on your computer, you can use the Windows 10 Device Manager.

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To do this, open the Windows 10 Start Menu, search for ‘Device Manager,’ and click on it when it opens. Then scroll through the list of categories until you see ‘Processors’ and expand it, as shown below.

If you wish to learn more about your computer’s CPU, including the processor family, stepping info, revision, and model numbers, you can download CPU-Z.

For example, from the information displayed in the Device Manager and CPU-Z above, you can see that my installed processor is an Intel  i7-8700k Coffee Lake processor.