InSpectre

The revelation of the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities has turned the tech industry on its head and everyone is scrambling left and right to figure out if they are susceptible to this new threat and what they should do. If you want to be sure your system won't be exploited by Meltdown and Spectre, the first thing you should do is perform a quick check with InSpectre. While it doesn't actually combat these threats, this simple utility's purpose is to provide you with information on which you can act on.

InSpectre works on all popular Windows systems and it doesn't need to be installed. All you have to do is download and run its executable. There are no special requirements you have to meet and the application's resource usage is insignificant. Also, InSpectre is offered completely free of charge.

Running InSpectre on your computer is all you have and can do. It quickly analyses your system and it provides you with a good amount of information about its state. The application tells you if you are vulnerable to Meltdown and Specter and it also provides more details regarding your hardware and its performance.

Without going too much into detail, Meltdown and Spectre are considered the biggest threats in recent years, since they provide a way for unprivileged applications to access privileged information at a basic level, without you noticing a thing. Although Microsoft and other big corporations rushed to roll out emergency updates to patch this issue, the patch itself does little more than bandage the problem, rather than fixing it altogether.

Another problem is the fact that the new patches can reduce the performance of your processor considerably, particularly if you are running an older unit. Fortunately, recent tests have shown that for home users who just surf the web, watch a movie or play a game, the performance hit won't be as sever as many have feared, at least at the time of writing.

After running InSpectre on your machine and figuring out what needs to be updated, you can run it again to see if your efforts have paid off. Also, the software can provide you with details about your processor's performance and how it's been affected by the update, so you can have a good idea how much the latest updates have effected you.

If you want to do everything you can to stay safe against Meltdown and Spectre, InSpectre is an excellent way to start.