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MELTDOWN AND SPECTRE, HOW YOU CAN BE PREPARED
Published by Gbaf News
Posted on January 18, 2018
7 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Global Banking and Finance Review
Company
Published by Gbaf News
Posted on January 18, 2018
7 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Josh Harriman, VP of Professional Services Ziften explains
A key area where we work with customer on battling Meltdown and Spectre, is monitoring for data exfiltration.
Josh Harriman, VP of Professional Services Ziften
As these attacks are taking data they shouldn’t have access to, we believe the first and easiest methods to protect yourself is to take all confidential data off your systems. This data might be passwords, login credentials or even security keys for SSH or VPN access.
Our system will throw up alerts as it monitors processes that do not normally make network connections but start exhibiting this unusual behavior. From these alerts, users can quarantine systems from the network and / or kill processes associated with these scenarios.
How am I Vulnerable?
Let’s look at areas we can monitor for vulnerable systems. Our solution can easily and quickly find Operating Systems that need to be patched. Even though these exploits are in the CPU chips themselves (Intel, AMD and ARM), the fixes that will be available will be updated to the OS, and in other cases, the browser you use.
In Figure 1 below, you can see one example of how we report on the available patches by name, what systems have successfully installed each patch, and which have yet to install. We can also track failed patch installs. The example below is not for Meltdown or Spectre, but the KB and/or patch number for environment could be populated on this report to show the vulnerable systems.
Figure 1: Tracking operating system patch installs in Ziften Zenith
The same holds true for browser updates. We monitor for software versions running in the environment. That data can be used to understand if all browsers are up to date once the fixes become available. Speaking of browsers, one area that has already picked up steam in the attack scenarios is utilizing Javascript. A working copy is shown here (https://www.react-etc.net/entry/exploiting-speculative-execution-meltdown-spectre-via-javascript).
Products like Edge browsers do not use Javascript anymore and mitigations are available for other browsers. Firefox has a fix available here (https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2018/01/03/mitigations-landing-new-class-timing-attack/). A Chrome fix is coming out this week.
What Can I Do Now?
Once you have identified vulnerable systems in your environment you certainly want to patch and fix them as soon as possible. Some safeguards you need to take into consideration are reports of certain Anti-Virus products causing stability issues when the patches are applied. Details about these issues are here (https://www.cyberscoop.com/spectre-meltdown-microsoft-anti-virus-bsod/) and here (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/184wcDt9I9TUNFFbsAVLpzAtckQxYiuirADzf3cL42FQ/htmlview?usp=sharing&sle=true).
We also have the capability to help patch systems. We can monitor for systems that need patches and direct our product to apply those patches for you and then report success/failure and the status of those still needing patching. Since the Zenith backend is cloud-based, we can even monitor your endpoint systems and apply the required patches when and if they are not connected to your corporate network.
Monitor – How is Everything Running?
Lastly, there could be some systems that exhibit performance degradation after the OS fixes are applied. These issues seem to be limited to high load (IO and network) systems. Our platform helps both security and operational teams within your environment. What we like to call SysSecOps
We can help uncover issues such as application crashes or hangs, and system crashes. Plus, we monitor system usage for Memory and CPU over time. This data can be used to monitor and alert on systems that start to exhibit high utilization compared to the period before the patch was applied. An example of this monitoring is shown in Figure 2 below (system names intentionally removed).
Figure 2: System Memory and CPU Usage over time
These ‘flaws’ are still new for the public, and much more will be discussed and is covered for days / weeks / months to come. My company will continue to monitor the situation and how we can best educate and protect our customers and partners.
Josh Harriman, VP of Professional Services Ziften explains
A key area where we work with customer on battling Meltdown and Spectre, is monitoring for data exfiltration.
Josh Harriman, VP of Professional Services Ziften
As these attacks are taking data they shouldn’t have access to, we believe the first and easiest methods to protect yourself is to take all confidential data off your systems. This data might be passwords, login credentials or even security keys for SSH or VPN access.
Our system will throw up alerts as it monitors processes that do not normally make network connections but start exhibiting this unusual behavior. From these alerts, users can quarantine systems from the network and / or kill processes associated with these scenarios.
How am I Vulnerable?
Let’s look at areas we can monitor for vulnerable systems. Our solution can easily and quickly find Operating Systems that need to be patched. Even though these exploits are in the CPU chips themselves (Intel, AMD and ARM), the fixes that will be available will be updated to the OS, and in other cases, the browser you use.
In Figure 1 below, you can see one example of how we report on the available patches by name, what systems have successfully installed each patch, and which have yet to install. We can also track failed patch installs. The example below is not for Meltdown or Spectre, but the KB and/or patch number for environment could be populated on this report to show the vulnerable systems.
Figure 1: Tracking operating system patch installs in Ziften Zenith
The same holds true for browser updates. We monitor for software versions running in the environment. That data can be used to understand if all browsers are up to date once the fixes become available. Speaking of browsers, one area that has already picked up steam in the attack scenarios is utilizing Javascript. A working copy is shown here (https://www.react-etc.net/entry/exploiting-speculative-execution-meltdown-spectre-via-javascript).
Products like Edge browsers do not use Javascript anymore and mitigations are available for other browsers. Firefox has a fix available here (https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2018/01/03/mitigations-landing-new-class-timing-attack/). A Chrome fix is coming out this week.
What Can I Do Now?
Once you have identified vulnerable systems in your environment you certainly want to patch and fix them as soon as possible. Some safeguards you need to take into consideration are reports of certain Anti-Virus products causing stability issues when the patches are applied. Details about these issues are here (https://www.cyberscoop.com/spectre-meltdown-microsoft-anti-virus-bsod/) and here (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/184wcDt9I9TUNFFbsAVLpzAtckQxYiuirADzf3cL42FQ/htmlview?usp=sharing&sle=true).
We also have the capability to help patch systems. We can monitor for systems that need patches and direct our product to apply those patches for you and then report success/failure and the status of those still needing patching. Since the Zenith backend is cloud-based, we can even monitor your endpoint systems and apply the required patches when and if they are not connected to your corporate network.
Monitor – How is Everything Running?
Lastly, there could be some systems that exhibit performance degradation after the OS fixes are applied. These issues seem to be limited to high load (IO and network) systems. Our platform helps both security and operational teams within your environment. What we like to call SysSecOps
We can help uncover issues such as application crashes or hangs, and system crashes. Plus, we monitor system usage for Memory and CPU over time. This data can be used to monitor and alert on systems that start to exhibit high utilization compared to the period before the patch was applied. An example of this monitoring is shown in Figure 2 below (system names intentionally removed).
Figure 2: System Memory and CPU Usage over time
These ‘flaws’ are still new for the public, and much more will be discussed and is covered for days / weeks / months to come. My company will continue to monitor the situation and how we can best educate and protect our customers and partners.
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