InSpectre Makes It Easy To See If Your PC Is Vulnerable To Spectre And Meltdown

There are a number of ways to tell if your computer is vulnerable to the Spectre or Meltdown security exploits that have been making rounds over the last several weeks. For instance, Microsoft has a tool that will analyze your rig and tell you, but it is a PowerShell script that gives you results that you almost need a computer science degree to understand. A new tool is now available that makes it very easy to test your machine and understand the results, and it is called InSpectre.

InSpectre is from Steve Gibson, security researcher, and his tool (download here) delivers easy to understand results. It will tell you with simple yes or no answers if you are vulnerable. The image below is the result screen from InSpectre. There is an issue with the original version of this software that saw it labeled as malware by antivirus scanners.

Gibson wrote on the software website, "Windows Defender 'SmartScreen' appears to have decided that InSpectre is malware. This also happened briefly after the release of our Never10 utility."

Gibson wrote that the reason InSpectre was triggering false-positives from third-party AV scanners was probably due to the registry key the application uses to enable and disable Meltdown and Spectre protections. He has since issued a second release of the software that is meant to avoid setting off AV scanners.

He wrote, "This second release hides its use of the registry key that was upsetting so many anti-virus scanners. A pass through Virus Total shows that made a huge difference. And that confusing paragraph was rewritten into two, which are now presented more correctly. Let's see how this second try fares."