14 DAY TRIAL // Systems that have already been upgraded to the Windows 10 April 2018 Update (version 1803) are now provided with a new update that brings more mitigations for the Spectre Variant 2 vulnerability in Intel processors.
Windows 10 update KB4100347 is thus only shipped to computers with Intel processors, and it is available right now via Windows Update and on Microsoft’s Update Catalog for manual downloads.
Among the CPUs getting microcode update as part of KB4100347, worth highlighting are Skylake and Kaby Lake series, both of which have already received other security fixes in the previous months from Intel and Microsoft. The full list of chips getting further mitigations with this update is available here.
“This update also includes Intel microcode updates that were already released for these operating systems at the time of release to manufacturing (RTM),” Microsoft explains.
Windows 10 April 2018 Update
Spectre Variant 2, further detailed in CVE 2017-5715, is one of the vulnerabilities found in Intel processors and disclosed in early January. Microsoft and Intel worked together on releasing security patches and further mitigations for affected processors on Windows 10, and the two companies have since released several updates, with additional improvements projected to land in the coming months.
Windows 10 April 2018 Update is getting its first Intel microcode update after the launch. This particular OS feature update, also known as version 1803, was launched as a manual download on April 30 via Windows Update, while on May 8 Microsoft officially kicked off the automatic rollout via Windows Update.
April 2018 Update has until now received just a single cumulative update on this month’s Patch Tuesday, bringing a rather limited collection of fixes, despite the significant number of bugs reported lately. Today’s security update does not include any other improvements besides the Intel microcode update, and no bug fixes are part of the release.