Covert Timing Channel Affecting kernel-rt-doc package, versions <0:3.10.0-1062.18.1.rt56.1044.el7


Severity

Recommended
high

Based on CentOS security rating

    Threat Intelligence

    EPSS
    0.05% (19th percentile)

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  • Snyk ID SNYK-CENTOS7-KERNELRTDOC-2153211
  • published 26 Jul 2021
  • disclosed 18 Nov 2019

How to fix?

Upgrade Centos:7 kernel-rt-doc to version 0:3.10.0-1062.18.1.rt56.1044.el7 or higher.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream kernel-rt-doc package and not the kernel-rt-doc package as distributed by Centos. See How to fix? for Centos:7 relevant fixed versions and status.

A flaw was found in the fix for CVE-2019-11135, in the Linux upstream kernel versions before 5.5 where, the way Intel CPUs handle speculative execution of instructions when a TSX Asynchronous Abort (TAA) error occurs. When a guest is running on a host CPU affected by the TAA flaw (TAA_NO=0), but is not affected by the MDS issue (MDS_NO=1), the guest was to clear the affected buffers by using a VERW instruction mechanism. But when the MDS_NO=1 bit was exported to the guests, the guests did not use the VERW mechanism to clear the affected buffers. This issue affects guests running on Cascade Lake CPUs and requires that host has 'TSX' enabled. Confidentiality of data is the highest threat associated with this vulnerability.

CVSS Scores

version 3.1
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NVD

5.5 medium
  • Attack Vector (AV)
    Local
  • Attack Complexity (AC)
    Low
  • Privileges Required (PR)
    Low
  • User Interaction (UI)
    None
  • Scope (S)
    Unchanged
  • Confidentiality (C)
    High
  • Integrity (I)
    None
  • Availability (A)
    None
Expand this section

SUSE

6.5 medium