RHEL 7 : kernel (RHSA-2018:2216) (Spectre)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 111148

Synopsis

The remote Red Hat host is missing one or more security updates.

Description

An update for kernel is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 Advanced Update Support, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 Telco Extended Update Support, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 Update Services for SAP Solutions.

Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having a security impact of Important. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available for each vulnerability from the CVE link(s) in the References section.

The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.

Security Fix(es) :

* An industry-wide issue was found in the way many modern microprocessor designs have implemented speculative execution of Load & Store instructions (a commonly used performance optimization). It relies on the presence of a precisely-defined instruction sequence in the privileged code as well as the fact that memory read from address to which a recent memory write has occurred may see an older value and subsequently cause an update 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 read privileged memory by conducting targeted cache side-channel attacks. (CVE-2018-3639, x86 AMD)

Red Hat would like to thank Ken Johnson (Microsoft Security Response Center) and Jann Horn (Google Project Zero) for reporting this issue.

Bug Fix(es) :

* When switching from the indirect branch speculation (IBRS) feature to the retpolines feature, the IBRS state of some CPUs was sometimes not handled correctly. Consequently, some CPUs were left with the IBRS Model-Specific Register (MSR) bit set to 1, which could lead to performance issues. With this update, the underlying source code has been fixed to clear the IBRS MSR bits correctly, thus fixing the bug.
(BZ#1586145)

Solution

Update the affected packages.

See Also

https://access.redhat.com/security/vulnerabilities/ssbd

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2018:2216

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2018-3639

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 111148

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2018-2216.nasl

Version: 1.10

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 7/18/2018

Updated: 4/15/2021

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6.7

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Low

Base Score: 2.1

Temporal Score: 1.6

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

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5.5

Temporal Score: 5

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

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-abi-whitelists, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debug, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debug-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debug-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-debuginfo-common-x86_64, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-doc, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-headers, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-tools, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-tools-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-tools-libs, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-tools-libs-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:perf, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:perf-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:python-perf, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:python-perf-debuginfo, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:7.2

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/RedHat/release, Host/RedHat/rpm-list, Host/cpu

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 7/17/2018

Vulnerability Publication Date: 5/22/2018

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2018-3639

RHSA: 2018:2216