Steve Gibson releases software for testing Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities.
It’s great. It’s simple. It’s free. It’s here.
https://www.grc.com/inspectre.htm
It literally lets you turn the patching on and off so one can use the system under either condition.
Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte discuss the software in this video podcast starting around 1:08:25.
Toward the end, Steve says that if you have any problem with your system slowing down after patching, you’ll be able to run for a long time (months?) without the patches until these vulnerabilities are actually exploited in some meaningful way.
I heard Leo say this past Sunday on the “This Week in Tech” podcast that he thinks the common user will be just fine without patching. A sophisticated hacker who is targeting one specific person or business could eventually be a problem.
I read a recent article by Woody Leonhard (Columnist, Computerworld) who also thinks there’s no need for us common folk to patch if it results in slow downs.
I’m just the kind of user this will affect. I have Haswell and I do a lot of audio/video editing and image processing.
The problems are real, but I think Intel and Microsoft are hyping this in the hope it will result in computer sales.