Protections against Meltdown malware by AV?

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Before Meltdown can do its work, surely it has to gain entry to a system via a browser exploit or an unwisely opened email attachment. Are antimalware protections still as relevant with Meltdown? Spectre seems to be being guarded against by browser makers and I guess that those exploits might be also picked up and so prevented by such as Web Shield or its installation on a system by Behaviour Shield. Not sure if an already installed Meltdown malware can be guarded against once it is installed.

Get my drift? I don’t seem to have seen much discussion anywhere about the protections by AV.

2

Behavior Shield and they are including Exploit Shield too with next update. Should help expand protection further.

3

That is good news. Many systems will never receive firmware updates, even fairly recent ones.

My very ancient Windows 7 system using an AMD Sempron 3000+ is better off than most as far as Meltdown is concerned.

4

If your sig is correct, also consider using a decent script-blocker (like NoScript or similar).

5

Thank you Asyn for that suggestion. I do use NoScript but your trouble in drawing it to my attention is much appreciated.

I would mention in return that the Google Chrome experimental Site Isolation feature is a very good feature to enable in order to keep private data out of bounds.

6

Made sure all machines this morning was using Avast, one i found that still had Windows Defender activated, probably got excited when i setup the newer laptop and forgot to install Avast oops, did a scan, all clean thankfully

Do have Chrome Installed, but mainly use Microsoft Edge as Default Browser on all systems, personal preference really there, this machine is in the list to get a future Bios update for Spectre security issue no idea when coming though exactly