News Retpoline Goes Default in Windows 10 Cumulative Update

[abryant]

Microsoft released a cumulative update for Windows 10 version 1809, the so-called Windows 10 October 2018 Update, to offer a wide range of improvements. Read more here.

NATHANIEL MOTT
@nathanielmott
Nathaniel Mott is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He covers software and hardware component news.

 

[USAFRet]

Headline:
Repotline

Text:
Retpoline


Still unsure what either one would mean.

 

[Tanyac]

So what does this mean...

Microsoft said in a blog post that Retpoline is currently disabled on "production Windows 10 client devices." The company plans to enable the feature via cloud configuration "over the coming months."

That people who don't use Microsoft accounts or the cloud at all will not be able to have this mitigation enabled?

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

retpoline - combination of return and trampoline.

A trampoline with a thunk as return, preventing memorization of a function in the indirect branch predictor.

It's a means for software to prevent a CPU's indirect branch predictor being used during speculative execution.

 

[mikeebb]

Interesting that most Linux had retpoline enabled by default shortly after Google released the method. My Mint install had it from first load in mid-2018. So MS is finally catching up, but you have to be using Azure to get it? When will it actually work in standalone clients (yes, I do have several W10 machines too)? Sounds like a 1903 thing?

 

[littleleo]

Yeah that October update bricked my system deleted all my restore points and deleted my Turbo Tax 2017, and crashed my Quicken, screwed up my steam and all my games. Now Quicken only does subscription version (what a rip off) and they won't help me recover the version I had. Not a big fan of MS updates as soon as I can get off MS I will and never look back.

 

[Colif]

all version updates delete restore points, the rest was not normal though.

 

[littleleo]

Yeah that October update trashed my computer and deleted all the restore points. MS forced updates suck!