2018 started in a very unpleasant way with the announcement of Meltdown and Spectre, two vulnerabilities that essentially put the DNA of processors manufactured over the last two decades in check. Intel, AMD, Microsoft and the rest of the big players have done everything possible to reduce the impact of both threats, but there are millions of computers out there that never received an update, whether through the operating system or through the BIOS on the motherboard. The new tool Intel Microcode Boot Loader acts as a "man in the middle" that updates the microcode on Intel processors without major surgery.
Few things are as traumatic in the IT world as a manufacturer that refuses to support its products. While we know nothing lasts forever, it's hard to believe that some platforms with just four or five years under their belt don't even receive a basic security review. This conflict became more serious after the announcement of Meltdown and Spectre. Experts continue to find variants that can exploit these vulnerabilities, so the global mitigation effort has not concluded. However, there is a "cutoff line" for patches and hotfixes that left millions of users without access to minimal protection. The Intel Microcode Boot Loader tool tries to correct that.
How to update old Intel processors with Intel Microcode Boot Loader
Intel Microcode Boot Loader was developed by Eran "Regeneration" Badit, and combines the Intel BIOS Implementation Test Suite with the Syslinux bootloader. Its job is to sit between the initialization of BIOS/UEFI and the booting of the operating system to update the microcode of Intel processors in every session and activate protection against Spectre (Meltdown is contained with OS patches). The latest version supports a total of 392 Intel processors manufactured between 1996 and 2018, and being a dynamic patch, it can easily receive new microcodes. What's the catch? Intel Microcode Boot Loader requires a USB drive permanently connected to the computer, formatted in FAT32 with 25 megabytes free, and configured as the first boot device. That in turn adds a sub-requirement: the motherboard must be compatible with boot via USB and legacy boot mode (the so-called CSM).
I admit it's not the most elegant implementation in the world, but using a USB drive saves us from the brain surgery of manually editing BIOS/UEFI files to merge the microcode with the fixes. In short, if you work with an Intel computer that runs Windows 7 (which Microsoft doesn't hesitate to ignore) or an earlier edition, and your motherboard didn't receive any BIOS/UEFI update that addresses the Meltdown-Spectre combo, Intel Microcode Boot Loader might help you.
