Spectre and BIOS/Intel Management Engine updates

[Phas3r]

Didn't know where else to post is but mods feel free to move it somewhere else if needed.

 

About the topic, how does this affect gamers with a gaming rig?

 

A few days after I did a firmware update I read on the internet that some people don't want to update the Intel Management Engine.

 

I thought I should always update to the latest firmware that's available. No?

 

How vulnerable are we with our gaming rigs?

[SpiralTTGL]

The bios update is another layer of protection, Windows also has protection against spectre and performance should be the same +/- 5% in gaming and in VERY specific tasks Up to 30 but these are generally outside the reach of regular consumers to reach that point

[Mira Yurizaki]

It only affects people in general by way of either having those security vulnerabilities or not. IME is not responsible for any real performance related operations, save for power management, if you consider it performance related. Everything else IME does either does with security, such as Boot Guard or supporting Trusted Platform Modules, or features that consumers aren't likely to use, like Active Management Technology or Serial over LAN.

 

As far as updating firmware, I never do it just because there's one available unless:

• There's a performance issue that the firmware fixes.
• There's a bug that constantly bothers me being fixed
• There's a major security update.

The reason being is that firmware is what makes that hardware work. If it works fine, there's no reason to fix it.

 

As far as how vulnerable you are, the known exploits either require physical access to the machine or admin account privileges to inject the payload in a protected region. I don't know if there's an exploit that could allow a drive-by malware to run in userland to inject its payload into IME.