CVE-2017-5753

Description

An industry-wide issue was found in the way many modern microprocessor designs have implemented speculative execution of instructions (a commonly used performance optimization). There are three primary variants of the issue which differ in the way the speculative execution can be exploited. Variant CVE-2017-5753 triggers the speculative execution by performing a bounds-check bypass. It relies on the presence of a precisely-defined instruction sequence in the privileged code as well as the fact that memory accesses may cause allocation into the microprocessor's data cache even for speculatively executed instructions that never actually commit (retire). As a result, an unprivileged attacker could use this flaw to cross the syscall boundary and read privileged memory by conducting targeted cache side-channel attacks.

Statement

Red Hat Product Security is aware of this issue. Updates will be released as they become available. For additional information, please refer to the Red Hat Knowledgebase article: https://access.redhat.com/security/vulnerabilities/speculativeexecution

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Info alert:Important note

CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown

Red HatNVDcve.org
Base Score5.55.65.6
Attack VectorLocalLocalLocal
Attack ComplexityLowHighHigh
Privileges RequiredLowLowLow
User InteractionNoneNoneNone
ScopeUnchangedChangedChanged
ConfidentialityHighHighHigh
Integrity ImpactNoneNoneNone
Availability ImpactNoneNoneNone

Vector

Red Hat: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

NVD: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N

cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N

Understanding the Weakness (CWE)

Confidentiality,Other

Technical Impact: Read Application Data; Other

Information exposure.

Acknowledgements

Red Hat would like to thank Google Project Zero for reporting this issue.

Frequently Asked Questions

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