What to do about vulnerable Helios 500 BIOS?

PredatorHelios500

Windows Defender flags the Predator Helios 500's BIOS as vulnerable to known malware attacks. Windows recommends users update to the latest version using the manufacturer of your machine's website so it's really disappointing that Acer hasn't updated the Helios 500 Insyde BIOS since November 2018 (v1.16).  This is a flagship type of machine so it shouldn't be abandoned and left out in the cold. Is there any better BIOS for the Helios 500 than what's available from Acer?

aphanic

I wonder what they mean by vulnerable, vulnerable to what, Spectre? Maybe it is because they haven't updated the microcode?

Anyway, there's nothing you can do unless hacking the BIOS if that's the problem it complains about, and that's a no-no per ACUA so you're probably on your own. You could try contacting Acer about it (remember this is a community forum, not an officially supported support channel), but if they haven't released a newer revision in the support page or pushed it through Windows Update, you may just have to live with it.

Out of curiosity, running InSpectre in your machine, what does it say?

xapim

PredatorHelios500 well if i were you i wouldnt put too much hope/trust on defender lol its most basically microsoft privacy in the house spyware and you dont have to worry about anyone exploiting your bios if that was even possible would have to be done physically on site no way that could be done remotely in any way also the H500 was a flagship machine how many devices were released after all manufacturers end up dropping all updates after maybe 2 variants/models up u had all the new H700/900 and the new tritons 500/300 and now all the new models from this year H300/nitros etc...

Unfortunately im afraid the H500 beast was forgotten in time and theres nothing we can do about it also bare in mind what i said about defender do not put much trust on any microsoft update/security sofware to keep u safe especially the new v2004 its a complete spyware personal privacy invasion on everyone and whats available its whats on acer support for nothing else those are the latest updates but again u can contact acer support directly and complain they will take it and register it but dont expect much to be done the devs/engineers are dedicated to the new releases not older as in any other company after all its a business as any other good luck

aphanic even my new aspire 5 10th gen its not meltdown protected i dont think anyone uses that software anymore anyways those vulnerabilities were more easy to exploit on really older cpus if that was a real issue intel would patch it and warn everyone about it to get it properly patched as its their job to patch any cpu vulnerabilities not the manufacturers personally that software doesnt mean much to me anymore i run my own security combo software to protect me never had a single issue on any of my devices since winxp and any laptop/desktop i fixed/tweaked got the exact same package 

aphanic

I thought of Spectre because it needed a firmware upgrade to update the microcode of some CPUs to aide with the mitigations, Meltdown didn't require any firmware change, I think the only way to mitigate it was via software. There were things that could help make those mitigations less of a burden but that's about it.

The only other things that comes to mind is Intel's ME, but I've never seen Defender protest about anything of the like, in in 10yo machines haha

xapim

aphanic yeah i know and and usually defender doesnt complain about anything intel related even if it would be bad as they are partners (in crime) xd