Ahead of the Intel/W10 security flaw update, this Tuesday...

[Orbx Flyer]

To my fellow Orbx subscribers,  I offer this personal suggestion of pro-active insurance...

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Being that this is coming, a major update to how the O.S. Kernel is allowed to be 'sniffed' by O.S. operations when running W10 (any version of it), I have some preemptive user suggestions, as regards our flight simulation usage and hobby;

 

1.  Today, or tomorrow, if you can, make a copy (an O.S. image) of your C: drive that hosts your Windows 10(whatever) O.S.  This will insure that you can bring back onto your system, your **CURRENT**, non-kernel-modified, O.S. that will insure that you keep your present CPU/Operating System interaction, performance at its current level.

The modification that is coming in an O.S. update from Microsoft, will completely rewrite the D.O.S./high level machine coding that is the very core of your O.S. It has been reported that one might see a tremendous hit to your current CPU/Kernel interaction and access speed, of up to a ***30 Percent*** decline in interrogation interaction.

 

Folks, this can not be downplayed...and poo-poo'ed....this is a massive potential decrease of system CPU/O.S. performance that will be most felt in graphic intensive applications and games/simulations.   Consider, most people will think of buying a new CPU, if it even offers to give them a 10-15 percent increase in simulation (FPS) performance. This is potentially a 30 percent decrease, of your present CPU system response AS OF RIGHT NOW!!!!!

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Therefore, I have already personally taken these steps to protect my use and enjoyment of the hobby;

 

1.  I have created this morning, a **System Image** of my C: drive.

2. I have put up all barriers that one can with using Windows 10 Professional O.S., and have shut down all updates, feature as well as security driven, until I can read from the forum(s) of what this up and coming security O.S. rewrite patch has done to other user's installs, that could not defeat automatic M.S. downloads over the next two weeks.  

 

If after reading that users, have seen a dramatic downturn in system performance, from this update, as regards flight and graphic intense, game simulations, that even W10 Pro users, will later, down the road, be force- installed, .....this is my plan moving forward:

 

I am prepared to run with a totally isolated (from the Net) computer system that will never have available, to the up and coming O.S. Kernel rewrite.  I am prepared to protect my present CPU/Kernel interaction/interrogation speed , and therefore will not be susceptible to any possible attempted, attack/hacking of this HUGE Intel blunder, and suffer from hereon, a 30 percent performance decrease across the entire usage of the O.S. system.

 

Folks...be warned, this is coming within the week....protect your present CPU/O.S. performance while you can!

 

If needs be, with this as from here on...will be a totally irreversible (the system speed, performance hit...),  therefore, ....you need to make a copy of your present system **RIGHT NOW**!

 

How much have you invested in $$$'s and your own personal time, towards this hobby....and ask yourself,  can you afford a as reported (a potential) 30 percent system speed reduction, in your usage of flight simulators?  If you can...don't sweat it...it's coming. If you can't...PROTECT yourself now.  Back up your present version of pre-kernel rewrite.  Windows 10 (whatever).  You still have that option...but not for long...

 

This might entail a new post-kernel rewrite, M.O. by the reader...that you keep your Flight Simulation Computer, and its present version of the O.S. and Kernel version, isolated from a direct hook-up and access to the Internet.  You can download from a second computer (perhaps a cheap laptop for user interaction and updates of all your computer installed programs and files) any flight simulator or other game updates/files, and then transfer them after vetting them with a virus program, TO YOUR NOW, ISOLATED AND PROTECTED (FROM HACK EXPLOIT) flight simulator host computer.

 

Folks, this will work.  It might be a PITA, but you will now protect your present system performance, which we all know, is critical for every 1 percent claw up, of CPU/GPU/Kernel flight simulation performance.  Your 'other internet active' computer will host the new Kernel (slower performance) rewrite,  but that won't matter to you. It will be for net interaction, forums, mail, blah, blah, and not in any way decrease your critical system flight simulator performance.

 

Just my suggestions while you still have a chance to do this.  If you agree with this strategy,  I suggest you create your System Image within 72 hours of this post, and then be in a position to bring back your present O.S. if you personally find that your flight simulation experience across all your installed flight sims, HAS been affected.

 

If you simply don't care....carry on with another post...:)   This post wasn't for you, lol!

[BrettT]

This may give some comfort, but one article I read (sorry I don't have a link) reported not to have an FPS impact on games that were tested.  Toms Hardware did report that most applications in "user-space" which includes most games and applications were not directly impacted from this and that the main slowdown appeared to be in storage  i/O operations

[Orbx Flyer]

16 minutes ago, BrettT said:

This may give some comfort, but one article I read (sorry I don't have a link) reported not to have an FPS impact on games that were tested.  Toms Hardware did report that most applications in "user-space" which includes most games and applications were not directly impacted from this and that the main slowdown appeared to be in storage  i/O operations

Let's hope this is the case, but  user-preparedness cannot be dismissed!

Just remember though, that in running all our games and simulators, they constantly are accessing and calling upon O.S. storage/HD read cycles for scenery and texture inputs.   We know that this has caused performance hits, and worse yet...stutter, pause, and chunk in animation.   This could be re-introduced to the mix, with this kernel rewrite. Best to be prepared!

 

Let's hope for the best-case, for all flight enthusiasts,....but for myself, in being already proactive,  I am prepared no matter what. I'm now protected.

[Stillwater]

Interesting to see everyone is talking about Win10 to be updated... no one seems to mention (my) Win7 ?!

[Orbx Flyer]

2 minutes ago, Stillwater said:

Interesting to see everyone is talking about Win10 to be updated... no one seems to mention (my) Win7 ?!

Because it is no longer fully supported, I guess those users are blowing out in the wind...

Because your Intel CPU is running that version of the O.S., it would still be vulnerable to this serious threat.  This might be alone, the need to make the jump to W10, if it is a true concern to any user still running W7 anything.

[MZee1960]

I think, after reading this ...... when I get home tonight, I will give my W7 desktop a big hug of affection !   

[Orbx Flyer]

43 minutes ago, MZee1960 said:

I think, after reading this ...... when I get home tonight, I will give my W7 desktop a big hug of affection !   

Hey, if this only impacts Intel/W10...mabye we ALL need to go back to W7 (whatever)!   Geez....lol (or not).

[Bullfox]

I am in W7 with an older AMD processor.  I have windows update turned off, hopefully it will stay that way.  Also, the computer is used only for flight sim. 

[MZee1960]

24 minutes ago, PNW User said:

Hey, if this only impacts Intel/W10...mabye we ALL need to go back to W7 (whatever)!   Geez....lol (or not).

 

W7 with SP1 still has full security suite updates scheduled until Jan.14, 2020.  I have them turned off, as I prefer to install the patches manually.

I have read many threads online re this W10 security update,  including this one here,  which seems to have a more pessimistic tone than yours  :

https://www.techspot.com/community/topics/massive-security-flaw-found-in-intel-cpus-patch-could-hit-performance-by-up-to-30.243525/

[Orbx Flyer]

KB4056892 has the kernel security rewrite. Just posted to my computer today.  

I hope you all did your System Image yesterday, in case you don't like what this brings.....

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

mine is updated and any impact on P3D v4 appears to be undetectable.

[Orbx Flyer]

2 minutes ago, Nick Cooper said:

Hello,

mine is updated and the impact on P3D v4 appears to be undetectable.

Good to read....will try out my sims, later as I have time.   As soon as I turned on my system this morning, it installed the Kernel rewrite KB.

[Nick Cooper]

The same for X Plane 11, Aerofly FS 2 and FSX.

[Orbx Flyer]

8 minutes ago, Nick Cooper said:

The same for X Plane 11, Aerofly FS 2 and FSX.

I hope it will be the same for me.   I'll need to try them all out later into the day.  Work calls, lol.

[Ezra]

Check out post-patch gaming benchmarks. So far with games other than flight sims they show 1% decrease for current CPU.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello again.

 

I tired of reading speculative nonsense elsewhere.

I may or may not have understood correctly and I am open to correction from someone

who does actually know what they are talking about.

 

It appears to me that the problem is:

 

Quote

Speculative execution side-channel vulnerabilities

 

also known as Meltdown.

 

I looked here and here which appear to be authoritative.

Based on what I read, I executed a few commands in Windows Powershell and the result was this:

 

 

 

It appears to me to say that the protection is in place but that it is not required because there is no hardware vulnerability.

Again, I am open to correction and would welcome informed advice.

 

 

[Doug Sawatzky]

Here is also what seems to be good accurate info that I am also trying to absorb.

 

https://meltdownattack.com/

[Nick Cooper]

Thanks Doug, very informative.

Based on that, I seem to have no hardware Spectre vulnerability and protection against Meltdown.

Subject again to someone who actually knows confirming this or not.

[Orbx Flyer]

28 minutes ago, Doug Sawatzky said:

Here is also what seems to be good accurate info that I am also trying to absorb.

 

https://meltdownattack.com/

Just great...just great...so Android and Cell Phones in general are susceptible too?!?!??   Just great....

 

Thanks for the link.

[Orbx Flyer]

20 minutes ago, Nick Cooper said:

Thanks Doug, very informative.

Based on that, I seem to have no hardware Spectre vulnerability and protection against Meltdown.

Subject again to someone who actually knows confirming this or not.

Nick, do you have a headache, yet?   I do....:(

[MarkH]

20 hours ago, PNW User said:

Because it is no longer fully supported, I guess those users are blowing out in the wind...

Because your Intel CPU is running that version of the O.S., it would still be vulnerable to this serious threat.  This might be alone, the need to make the jump to W10, if it is a true concern to any user still running W7 anything.

 

MS has already issued offline patches for Win7 and Win8.1. The Win7 updates will roll out through Windows Update next Tuesday. This all sounds a bit alarmist to me.

 

[Orbx Flyer]

14 minutes ago, MarkH said:

 

MS has already issued offline patches for Win7 and Win8.1. The Win7 updates will roll out through Windows Update next Tuesday. This all sounds a bit alarmist to me.

 

Of course there is an alarm.  If this is fact, then good for W7 users.  This latest threat is no walk in the park.

[Doug Sawatzky]

Yes, it does appear from Intels list of affected products the i7 4790k being of the 22nm lithography are not affected. 

 

It it also seems that even for the affected hardware, this may be a non issue for most desktop type users performance wise.

[Orbx Flyer]

12 minutes ago, Doug Sawatzky said:

Yes, it does appear from Intels list of affected products the i7 4790k being of the 22nm lithography are not affected. 

 

It it also seems that even for the affected hardware, this may be a non issue for most desktop type users performance wise.

I run an older i7-980 and when I ran the test, it showed a vulnerability. I was truly surprised by that.

 

This article confirms that CPU's as far back as a production year of 1995(!!!) can be vulnerable. That explains my i7-980, then.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/security-flaws-affect-every-intel-chip-since-1995-arm-processors-vulnerable/

[MarkH]

43 minutes ago, PNW User said:

Of course there is an alarm.  If this is fact, then good for W7 users.  This latest threat is no walk in the park.

 

AlarmIST.

[Orbx Flyer]

AlarmIST.

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LOL.  Seriously?

[rjlfry]

I can confirm patch downloaded today test flight with PMDG 747-400 UK2000 EGKK to EGLL , ORBX UK . 

No impact on performance that I could see, 7700k 4.9 ,1080 , 16mb G Skill .

PS Spectre is still a problem for all CPU`s but harder to implement it will take a redesign of the future CPU`s to remove it.

[Orbx Flyer]

Nick, just had the time to run all my flight sims.  Have not experienced any FPS drop across all of them, so...as far as flight simming, I think W10 (anything) post-patch, we are all good. My system is not the latest and greatest, so I feel then, nobody will have much or any issues over this Intel snafu.

It was, and always is, best to prepare for the unknown, and then be pleasantly surprised, rather than unpleasantly surprised...

 

Cheers,

 

PNW

[MarkH]

1 hour ago, PNW User said:

My system is not the latest and greatest, so I feel then, nobody will have much or any issues over this Intel snafu

 

On the contrary, it seems to me that we might expect older and cheaper processors, which exploit parallelism less aggressively and rely less on caching, to be less prone to performance degradation.

[Orbx Flyer]

1 hour ago, MarkH said:

 

On the contrary, it seems to me that we might expect older and cheaper processors, which exploit parallelism less aggressively and rely less on caching, to be less prone to performance degradation.

On the contrary?   I believe this is what I typed.  Nobody should have too many issues with this...as seen from a flight sim FPS perspective, with the past decade of produced CPU's.

 

Over 'n out.

[robmw]

A word of caution about this problem - it isn't done with and further fixes will appear over the coming weeks and months, probably less visible in the cumulative updates. Added to that the necessary firmware fixes for Spectre, which are where the performance hits will be, will take some time to appear. The software patches will only ever be a partial fix. You can see this in the mitigation check script that Nick posted.

 

So the fact that there hasn't been a noticeable performance hit with the patches so far is not indicative of what will happen later on.

 

BTW - just about every Intel processor from the last 10 years is affected. The i7-4790K Haswell is a 4th gen i7 core, the specific i3's, i5's, and i7's listed in the Intel info are the original core processors.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if subsequent patches take a bit of performance each time, not really noticeable individually but cumulatively less so and hard to quantify if you no longer have a baseline to compare against.

 

Finally this is significant for the sims most of us use which require significant I/O throughput via the processor, there is still a great deal that cannot be offloaded to the GPU.

[Orbx Flyer]

1 hour ago, robmw said:

A word of caution about this problem - it isn't done with and further fixes will appear over the coming weeks and months, probably less visible in the cumulative updates. Added to that the necessary firmware fixes for Spectre, which are where the performance hits will be, will take some time to appear. The software patches will only ever be a partial fix. You can see this in the mitigation check script that Nick posted.

 

So the fact that there hasn't been a noticeable performance hit with the patches so far is not indicative of what will happen later on.

 

BTW - just about every Intel processor from the last 10 years is affected. The i7-4790K Haswell is a 4th gen i7 core, the specific i3's, i5's, and i7's listed in the Intel info are the original core processors.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if subsequent patches take a bit of performance each time, not really noticeable individually but cumulatively less so and hard to quantify if you no longer have a baseline to compare against.

 

Finally this is significant for the sims most of us use which require significant I/O throughput via the processor, there is still a great deal that cannot be offloaded to the GPU.

Hi there,   

My sustainable, 'baseline' was in creating a C: drive total image of my O.S. **before** any of the patches were released.  That was the intent of my post...that users should take the effort to make a pre-patch SYSTEM IMAGE!, and subsequent patches (as you correctly suggest...) might cause cumulative system performance loss.

 

Yes, correctly, this isn't over...and it's BIG.  This isn't some 'oh, there is a security mention reported, let's patch it in the O.S.'  That's why I took the trouble to spell it out, for every user's ability to bring back their pre-SNAFU, O.S., and can have the option to (with their affected CPU resident) make the decision to totally isolate further, their flight computer from **active connection** to the Internet, and only post via USB sticks or hard drives,(whatever) transfers, flight files, new programs, updates, Orbx, etc...that have been in the process, vetted by a trusted antivirus program, over to their 'now fully CPU-performance,protected', flight computer system.

 

In this way, they can keep what level of performance their flight system put out, prior to this big reveal.  That was my plan, and is my contingency plan, if as you say, I see a continuing erosion of system performance, as seen through graphically intensive games and ALL types of simulator software.  I'm covered.  I hope some others, also took measures I suggested. If so...they have nothing to worry about.   For use of the live Internet, one can buy a cheap performance-free/low laptop, that will be used into the future to cover Net activities.  Most already have that, or a system collecting dust in their downstairs closets, that will do nicely for this.  I have just such a one, with an old Celeron CPU, and 300 GB hard drive still installed,..so there I go....  .

[Triplane]

My love for Windows 7 and daily Acronis image files is unbounded................

[Orbx Flyer]

4 hours ago, Triplane said:

My love for Windows 7 and daily Acronis image files is unbounded................

You go, guy!