Dell Advising All Customers To Not Install Spectre BIOS Updates

[starbuck]

The Spectre & Meltdown mess continues with Dell now recommending their customers do not install the BIOS updates that resolve the Spectre (Variant 2) vulnerabilities.
These updates have been causing numerous problems for users including performance issues, boot issues, reboot issues, and general system instability.

Due to this, Dell EMC has updated their knowledge base article with the following statement advising customers to not install the BIOS update and to potentially rollback to the previous BIOS if their computers are exhibiting "unpredictable system behavior".

Patch Guidance (update 2018-01-22):
Intel has communicated new guidance regarding "reboot issues and unpredictable system behavior" with the microcode included in the BIOS updates released to address Spectre (Variant 2), CVE-2017-5715.
Dell is advising that all customers should not deploy the BIOS update for the Spectre (Variant 2) vulnerability at this time.
We have removed the impacted BIOS updates from our support pages and are working with Intel on a new BIOS update that will include new microcode from Intel.

If you have already deployed the BIOS update, in order to avoid unpredictable system behavior, you can revert back to a previous BIOS version. See the tables below.

As a reminder, the Operating System patches are not impacted and still provide mitigation to Spectre (Variant 1) and Meltdown (Variant 3).
The microcode update is only required for Spectre (Variant 2), CVE-2017-5715.

In order to facilitate the rolling back to a previous BIOS version, Dell has a table listing the Spectre fix BIOS versions that customers should not use and the recommended BIOS versions that a customer should roll back to.

This news comes on the heels of LinusTorvalds' remarks on how he felt the Linux patches for Spectre are "utter garbage".


Source:
Dell Advising All Customers To Not Install Spectre BIOS Updates

 

[starbuck]

HP Pulls Spectre Security Update Due to Intel Bug

Source:
HP Pulls Spectre Security Update Due to Intel Bug

 

[Tony D]

You just can't win.

 

[AWS]

This is really turning into a mess.

 

[plodr]

Lenovo has joined Dell and HP.
Let the BIOS/UEFI firmware recall begin!

 

[peterr]

I have a Dell XPS 8300. My motherboard model is Sandy Bridge and the chipset revision is 09 & is Intel. The BIOS is Dell version A06 and the date is 10-17-11. It says Southbridge model H67 and revision B3. The CPU is i5 2500.
I do not understand what I have read about the BIOS; could you please explain this to me. I got this from Speccy.

 

[allheart55 (Cindy E)]

You are not affected because you haven't updated your BIOS, Peter. (2011)
In any case, they have removed the BIOS updates that are creating problems and are working on releasing new ones.

 

[peterr]

I appreciate the information and hope it all works out for everyone.