Steps to Apply Microsoft Patch to Addressed Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerability on Traps Agents

1. Coverage for the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities: Traps anti-exploitation mechanisms will not protect against exploiting of these vulnerabilities. The disclosed vulnerabilities are memory read vulnerabilities. They do not cause code execution. For an attacker to use these vulnerabilities, there likely would have been an initial attack phase that Traps may be able to prevent (e.g. a malicious EXE attempts to exploit the vulnerabilities).
   
   For more information on Microsoft’s updates, please see Microsoft Security Advisory ADV180002 Guidance to mitigate speculative execution side-channel vulnerabilities
   
   Note that these vulnerabilities are memory read vulnerabilities; they do not cause code execution. For an attacker to use these vulnerabilities in an attack, they would have to have already executed a successful initial attack that Traps may be able to prevent (e.g. a malicious EXE attempts to exploit the vulnerabilities).
   
   
   

2. Compatibility: All the currently supported product lines (3.4, 4.0, and 4.1) were tested running on all the supported Operating System versions and certified to be compatible with the Microsoft Security updates. Note that the tests were performed on both physical and virtual machines.
   
   Find more information around Supported Operating Systems and Platforms on our Compatibility Matrix.
   https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/documentation/global/compatibility-matrix/traps/where-can-i-install-the-traps-agent
   
   Microsoft patch: Traps is compatible with the patches Microsoft released to fix CVE-2017-5753, CVE-2017-5715, and CVE-2017-5754 vulnerabilities.
    

   Apple patch: Traps is compatible with macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 Supplemental Update including security improvements to Safari and WebKit to mitigate the effects of CVE-2017-5753 and CVE-2017-5715.
   
   

3. Installing the Patch: Traps  4.0.5-h1, Traps 4.1.2-h1, and later automatically set the registry key Microsoft requires to be present for their security updates to install successfully.
   
   For more information on this registry key, please see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 4072699.

Customers requiring assistance with the upgrade, or assistance with older versions can reach out to the Palo Alto Networks Support team. Find the Support contact for your region at https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/company/contact-support

Change Log

Friday, Jan. 12, 2018

• Post updated to include the note at the bottom of the article regarding a forthcoming update.

Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2018

• Updated with information about the new releases that allow Windows to install the patches automatically.

Friday, Jan. 26, 2018

• Updated to clarify information around the Microsoft Windows registry key.