Red Hat has been made aware of an additional spectre-V1 like attack vector, requiring updates to the Linux kernel. This additional attack vector builds on existing software fixes shipped in previous kernel updates. This vulnerability only applies to x86-64 systems using either Intel or AMD processors.
An unprivileged local attacker can use these flaws to bypass conventional memory security restrictions to gain read access to privileged memory that would otherwise be inaccessible.
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
- Red Hat Atomic Host
- Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2
- Red Hat OpenShift Online v3
- Red Hat Virtualization (RHV/RHV-H)
- Red Hat OpenStack Platform
- Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 (RHEL CoreOS)
Red Hat has been made aware of an additional spectre-V1 like attack vector, requiring updates to the Linux kernel. This additional attack vector builds on existing software fixes shipped in previous kernel updates. This vulnerability only applies to x86-64 systems using either Intel or AMD processors. An unprivileged local attacker can use these flaws to bypass conventional memory security restrictions to gain read access to privileged memory that would otherwise be inaccessible. The specific instruction of interest (SWAPGS) is only available on the x86-64 architecture, as such only x86-64 platform vendors (Intel and AMD) are known to be affected. There is no known complete mitigation other than updating the kernel and rebooting the system. This kernel patch builds on existing spectre mitigations from previous updates.
The kernel-rt packages provide the Real Time Linux Kernel, which enables fine-tuning for systems with extremely high determinism requirements. Details of these vulnerabilities are as below:
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kernel: broken permission and object lifetime handling for PTRACE_TRACEME (CVE-2019-13272)
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kernel: hw: Spectre SWAPGS gadget vulnerability (CVE-2019-1125)
Customers are advised to take a risk-based approach to mitigate this issue. Systems that require high degrees of security and trust should be addressed first and isolated from untrusted systems until treatments can be applied to those systems to reduce the risk of exploit.
- After appropriate testing, immediately apply the updates provided by Red Hat immediately and reboot to mitigate this flaw correctly.
- Run all software as a non-privileged user (one without administrative privileges) to diminish the effects of a successful attack.
- Remind users not to visit un-trusted websites or follow links provided by unknown or un-trusted sources.
- Inform and educate users regarding the threats posed by hypertext links contained in emails or attachments especially from un-trusted sources.
- Apply the Principle of Least Privilege to all systems and services.