Forum Discussion
Windows Update and security fixes.
HotCakeXI totally agree with your analyze. The issue is that in reality, according to Microsoft expert internal tests, it is not yet safe or fixed with 1909 version. You still need to manually modify registry.
I think you misunderstood the side-channel mitigations article.
If you have all Updates installed on a current Windows 10 (1809, 1903, 1909), and your firmware has the correct cpu microcode, you don't have to edit the registry.
The article you linked to describes methods to disable certain mitigations if you run into problems, or enable special cases.
If we talk about Windows Server, then it is a different story. There you have to manually activate part of the mitigations. As many of these mitigations can cost a substantial ammount of performance in certain server environments, it would not be wise to enable them without an admin testing it first.
To sum it up:
For Windows 10 Clients with Intel CPU, ALL operatingsystem-mitigations, except system-wide speculative store bypass mitigation, are enabled by default. You do NOT need to touch the registry if you don't have a special case where SSBD is a problem. SSBD-mitigations are only needed if you run vulnerable software. All operating system binaries are not vulnerable to SSBD. Be aware that system-wide SSBD-mitigation will impact end-user performance!
For Windows Server 2019 with Intel CPU, you have to set 2 registry keys (FeatureSettingsOverride = 0, FeatureSettingsOverrideMask = 3) to get the same protections as a Windows 10 Client. You can easily set these keys for your servers with group policy.
You need firmware-updates for your hardware to mitigate some of the vulnerabilites! you cannot mitigate side-channel vulnerabilites with windows updates and/or registry keys alone!
If you want to know the protection state of a system, open powershell and install the speculationcontrol module. With this module you can use "get-speculationcontrolsettings" to get a complete rundown of side-channel-protections and vulnerabilites. It will tell you if your hardware is vulnerable in the first place, if os-mitigations are enabled and if hardware-support for this mitigations is available.
If it tells you to update your device firmware, you need to check with your oem, or you will be vulnerable anyway.