Microsoft has been working on releasing 19H1 soon and while the company has made several changes to the OS as well as added new features, there are some which might have gone unnoticed. The new features spotted on Windows 10 are linked to the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities which hit PCs more than a year ago.
While companies have made significant changes to their hardware, they still need a system that could protect users from a similar attack. That’s where Google comes in. Google has developed a process called “retpoline” which can actively work to stop attacks like Spectre. The system works in conjunction with “import optimization” to improve and lift the performance to the pre-Specter time.
Yes, we have enabled retpoline by default in our 19H1 flights along with what we call "import optimization" to further reduce perf impact due to indirect calls in kernel-mode. Combined, these reduce the perf impact of Spectre v2 mitigations to noise-level for most scenarios. https://t.co/CPlYeryV9K
— Mehmet Iyigun (@mamyun) October 18, 2018
Microsoft has enabled both “import optimization” and “retpoline” in 19H1 builds and will add it to the April 2019 Update. This will help millions of users who were affected by the vulnerability and will ensure that something like this doesn’t happen in the future.
Via: Windows United