Optional Windows update disables crash-causing Spectre mitigations
by from Techreport on (#3EJ9J)
If you're one of the unlucky few affected by "higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behavior" as a result of a security patch for your Intel system, rejoice. You can now disable the patch, restoring at least a modicum of sanity to your machine. Microsoft just issued update KB4078130 that specifically disables only the mitigation against CVE-2017-5715-better known as "Spectre, variant 2."
Of course, disabling the mitigation will make you vulnerable to that exploit. As Microsoft itself points out, there are no reports of this exploit being used in the wild so far. When the vulnerabilities were initially revealed , researchers did ...