This was posted on the tenforums.com yesterday. I have a 2017 Dell Inspiron 15 laptop and a home built system with an ASUS ROG Maximus VIII motherboard (i7 6700K) and both had BIOS updates available yesterday. I installed them, CAREFULLY, and both are working OK with the new updates.
Over the past several weeks, we’ve been developing and validating updated microcode solutions to protect Intel customers against the security exploits disclosed by Google Project Zero. This effort has included extensive testing by customers and industry partners to ensure the updated versions are ready for production. On behalf of all of Intel, I thank each and every one of our customers and partners for their hard work and partnership throughout this process.
More: Security Exploits and Intel Products (Press Kit) | Security Research Findings (Intel.com)
Based on these efforts, we have now released production microcode updates to our OEM customers and partners for Kaby Lake- and Coffee Lake-based platforms, plus additional Skylake-based platforms. This represents our 6th, 7th and 8th Generation Intel® Core™ product lines as well as our latest Intel® Core™ X-series processor family. It also includes our recently announced Intel® Xeon® Scalable and Intel® Xeon® D processors for data center systems.
The new microcode will be made available in most cases through OEM firmware updates. I continue to encourage people to always keep their systems up-to-date. There is also a comprehensive schedule and current status for planned microcode updates available online.
We are mindful of the fact that, in some cases, there are multiple mitigation techniques available that may provide protection against these exploits. This includes “Retpoline,” a Google-developed mitigation technique for Variant 2. For those interested in more information on Retpoline and how it works, we recently published a new white paper. Google has also posted information about Retpoline.
I look forward to sharing additional updates soon. Again, I extend my sincere appreciation to all Intel customers and industry partners for their ongoing support.
Navin Shenoy
Executive vice president and general manager of the Data Center Group at Intel Corporation