McAfee & support for January 2018 Security patches

[Former Member]

Hi, I've not been able to find any official stance from McAfee on it's compatibility with the January 2018 MS patches to mitigate Meltdown & Spectre.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4072699/important-information-regarding-the-windows-securit...

"The compatibility issue is caused when anti-virus applications make unsupported calls into Windows kernel memory. These calls may cause stop errors (also known as blue screen errors) that make the device unable to boot. To help prevent stop errors caused by incompatible anti-virus applications, Microsoft is only offering the Windows security updates released on January 3, 2018 to devices running anti-virus software from partners who have confirmed their software is compatible with the January 2018 Windows operating system security update."

Is McAfee compatible and does it set the required registry key to enable the patch to apply?

Thanks in advance.

[Former Member]

We have raised this with support and our Account manager currently we are being told this is not supported and the engineering team is working on the fix and check back in a couple of days ....

[Former Member]

Good to hear a response from McAfee on this issue although not the one we want to hear in an Enterprise environment (tens of thousands of endpoints). It will be risky enough to install an OS kernel update, never mind adding to that a VirusScan Enterprise update -- both just released and not yet well burned-in in the field. Hopeful but cautious. Looking forward to further reports from McAfee on this today.

[Former Member]

I'm looking for any official info posted to the web -- has anybody found anything yet?

No mention of compatibility issues or any work in progress at https://securingtomorrow.mcafee.com/mcafee-labs/decyphering-the-noise-around-meltdown-and-spectre/

[Former Member]

As far as McAfee goes, they haven’t “officially” said anything yet, but there’s probably plenty of AV companies that are scrambling to make sure they have an update that will work with this patch.  I can't say with 100% certainty, but I'd think they'd email an update out with the SNS Subscriptions. 

[Former Member]

trevor.craze  Did you hear back from Mcafee support or your account manager?

[Former Member]

Nothing from support they closed the ticket, and the account manager sent me the KB after it was published by SNS

[twenden]

Our McAfee Account Manager said that he is yet to see an official response from support. He has sent a request to them for an update and will let me know.

[Former Member]

I reached out to our account manager and he said he just got this about 10 mins ago:

McAfee Corporate KB - Meltdown and Spectre – Microsoft update (January 3, 2018) compatibility issue ...

[twenden]

Got the same info from our Account Manager a few minutes ago also.

FYI,

There is a KB90167 article from McAfee, the link is below. Got both of thse links from our McAfee Account Manager today.

McAfee Corporate KB - Meltdown and Spectre – Microsoft update (January 3, 2018) compatibility issue ...

Decyphering the Noise Around ‘Meltdown’ and ‘Spectre’