Debian DSA-4078-1 : linux - security update (Meltdown)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 105595

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Synopsis

The remote Debian host is missing a security-related update.

Description

Multiple researchers have discovered a vulnerability in Intel processors, enabling an attacker controlling an unprivileged process to read memory from arbitrary addresses, including from the kernel and all other processes running on the system.

This specific attack has been named Meltdown and is addressed in the Linux kernel for the Intel x86-64 architecture by a patch set named Kernel Page Table Isolation, enforcing a near complete separation of the kernel and userspace address maps and preventing the attack. This solution might have a performance impact, and can be disabled at boot time by passing pti=off to the kernel command line.

We also identified a regression for ancient userspaces using the vsyscall interface, for example chroot and containers using (e)glibc 2.13 and older, including those based on Debian 7 or RHEL/CentOS 6.
This regression will be fixed in a later update.

The other vulnerabilities (named Spectre) published at the same time are not addressed in this update and will be fixed in a later update.

Solution

Upgrade the linux packages.

For the oldstable distribution (jessie), this problem will be fixed in a separate update.

For the stable distribution (stretch), this problem has been fixed in version 4.9.65-3+deb9u2.

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 105595

File Name: debian_DSA-4078.nasl

Version: 3.13

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Debian Local Security Checks

Published: 1/5/2018

Updated: 7/15/2019

Supported Sensors: Agentless Assessment, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: High

Score: 8.1

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 4.7

Temporal Score: 4.1

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:N/A:N

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5.6

Temporal Score: 5.4

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:H/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:linux, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:9.0

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/Debian/release, Host/Debian/dpkg-l

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 1/4/2018

Vulnerability Publication Date: 1/4/2018

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2017-5754

DSA: 4078

IAVA: 2018-A-0019

Detections

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