Me, myself & IT

Meltdown, Spectre, Spectre-NG and Foreshadow Update Check Utility

Purpose

The Windows^® application BTI_RDCL.EXE displays the status of the mitigations for the vulnerabilities CVE-2017-5715 alias Branch Target Injection and CVE-2017-5754 alias Rogue Data Cache Load, better known by their nicknames Meltdown and Spectre, as well as the mitigations for the vulnerability CVE-2018-3639 alias Speculative Store Bypass, also known as Spectre-NG or Variant 4, CVE-2018-3640 alias Rogue System Register Read, also known as Spectre-NG or Variant 3a, and CVE-2018-3615, CVE-2018-3620 plus CVE-2018-3646 alias L1 Terminal Fault, also known by its nickname Foreshadow.
The mitigations are installed by one of the security updates 4056888, 4056890, 4056891, 4056892, 4056893, 4056894, 4056895, 4056896, 4056897, 4056898 and 4056899, the subsequent updates 4057142, 4057144, 4075199, 4075200, 4057400, 4057401, 4057402, 4073290, 4073291, 4073576 and 4073578, and their successors.

Note: the status of the mitigations for the vulnerabilities CVE-2017-5753 alias Bounds Check Bypass and CVE-2018-3693 alias Bounds Check Bypass Store can’t be shown: every sequence of machine code which is susceptible to these vulnerabilities needs to be fixed individually!

Background Information

The MSKB articles 4072698, 4072699, 4073065, 4073119, 4073225, 4073229, 4073237, 4073707, 4073757, 4078130 and 4078407 provide information about the updates.

The MSKB articles 4090007, 4091663, 4091664, 4091666, 4093836, 4100347, 4346084, 4346085, 4346086, 4346087, 4346088 and 4465065 provide information about the microcode updates distributed through the Microsoft Update Catalog.

The posts Mitigating speculative execution side channel hardware vulnerabilities, KVA Shadow: Mitigating Meltdown on Windows, Analysis and mitigation of speculative store bypass (CVE-2018-3639) and Analysis and mitigation of L1 Terminal Fault (L1TF) on Microsoft’s Security Research and Defense Blog give additional information.

Operation

[Screenshot of BTI_RDCL.EXE without security update for 'Meltdown' (CVE-2017-5754), 'Spectre' (CVE-2017-5715, CVE-2017-5753) and 'Spectre-NG' (CVE-2018-3639, CVE-2018-3640)]

Without security update installed, BTI_RDCL.EXE displays two message boxes like that shown on the right.

With security update installed, BTI_RDCL.EXE displays two message boxes like those shown below.

[Screenshot of BTI_RDCL.EXE with active mitigation for 'Meltdown' (CVE-2017-5754)]

Implementation and Build Details

BTI_RDCL.EXE is a pure Win32 application, written in ANSI C, built with the ~~Platform SDK for Windows Server 2003 R2~~ Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler 2010 SP1 from update 2519277, but without the MSVCRT libraries, for use on Windows ~~2000~~ XP and newer versions of Windows NT as well as Windows PE.

Authenticity and Integrity

BTI_RDCL.EXE is digitally signed using an X.509 certificate issued by WEB.DE TrustCenter E-Mail Certification Authority.

Serial number of the certificate: 73780985; 0x0465CEF9
Fingerprint of the certificate: MD5: 33 33 6e 1d 26 18 a7 c2 be 87 11 68 05 2c 70 09; SHA-1: 8c 5b 75 21 40 41 77 ac 54 13 13 02 06 6b b0 69 10 2e 83 0e

Download and install the CA and root X.509 certificates of WEB.DE to validate and verify the digital signature.

Note: due to its counter signature alias timestamp the digital signature remains valid past the X.509 certificates expiration date!

Makefile and Build Instructions

Optionally perform the following four simple steps to build BTI_RDCL.EXE from the source and sign it with your own X.509 certificate.

Download the makefile BTI_RDCL.MAK and save it in an arbitrary, preferable empty directory.
Download the Meltdown icon and save it as MELTDOWN.ICO in the directory used in step 1.
Download the Spectre icon and save it as SPECTRE.ICO in the directory used in step 1.

Run the following command line to build BTI_RDCL.EXE:

NMAKE.EXE /R /F BTI_RDCL.MAK

Microsoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility Version 10.00.40219.01
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

	RC.EXE /DUNICODE /FoBTI_RDCL.RES /L 0 /N /R /V nm2A7.tmp
Microsoft (R) Windows (R) Resource Compiler Version 6.1.7600.16385
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

Using codepage 1252 as default
Creating BTI_RDCL.RES
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\Include\string.h(54) : warning RC4011: identifier truncated to '_CRT_SECURE_CPP_OVERLOAD_STANDA'
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\Include\string.h(76) : warning RC4011: identifier truncated to '_CRT_SECURE_CPP_OVERLOAD_SECURE'

nm2A7.tmp.
Writing ICON:1, lang:0x0,       size 9640
Writing ICON:2, lang:0x0,       size 4264
Writing ICON:3, lang:0x0,       size 1128
Writing GROUP_ICON:1,   lang:0x0,       size 48.
Writing ICON:4, lang:0x0,       size 9640
Writing ICON:5, lang:0x0,       size 4264
Writing ICON:6, lang:0x0,       size 1128
Writing GROUP_ICON:2,   lang:0x0,       size 48.
Writing 24:1,   lang:0x0,       size 1308.
Writing VERSION:1,      lang:0x0,       size 1720
	CL.EXE /c /FoBTI_RDCL.OBJ /GA /GF /GS- /Gy /nologo /O1 /Os /Tcnm2A8.tmp /W4 /we4013 /Zl
nm2A8.tmp
	CL.EXE /c /FoBTI_RDCL.TMP /nologo /Tcnm2A9.tmp /W4 /wd4100 /Zl
nm2A9.tmp
	LINK.EXE /LIB /DEF /EXPORT:NtQuerySystemInformation /EXPORT:RtlNtStatusToDosError /NAME:NTDLL /NODEFAULTLIB /NOLOGO /OUT:BTI_RDCL.LIB BTI_RDCL.TMP
   Creating library BTI_RDCL.LIB and object BTI_RDCL.exp
	CERTUTIL.EXE /DecodeHex /F /V nm2AA.tmp BTI_RDCL.DOS
Input Length = 730
Output Length = 160
CertUtil: -decodehex command completed successfully.
	LINK.EXE /LINK /DYNAMICBASE /ENTRY:wWinMainCRTStartup /FIXED:NO /IGNORE:4060 /LARGEADDRESSAWARE /NODEFAULTLIB /NOLOGO /NXCOMPAT /OPT:REF /OSVERSION:5.0 /OUT:BTI_RDCL.EXE /RELEASE /STUB:BTI_RDCL.DOS /SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS /SWAPRUN:CD,NET /VERSION:1.0 BTI_RDCL.OBJ BTI_RDCL.RES BTI_RDCL.LIB KERNEL32.LIB USER32.LIB
	".\BTI_RDCL.EXE"

Contact

If you miss anything here, have additions, comments, corrections, criticism or questions, want to give feedback, hints or tipps, report broken links, bugs, errors, inaccuracies, omissions, vulnerabilities or weaknesses, …:
don’t hesitate to contact me and feel free to ask, comment, criticise, flame, notify or report!

Notes: I dislike HTML (and even weirder formats too) in email, I prefer to receive plain text.
I also expect to see your full (real) name as sender, not your nickname!
Emails in weird formats and without a proper sender name are likely to be discarded.
I abhor top posts and expect inline quotes in replies.

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The software and the documentation on this site are provided as is without any warranty, neither express nor implied.
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Redistribution of the software and the documentation is allowed only in unmodified form of its current version and free of charge.

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