The following three side-channel attacks were publicly disclosed on January 3, 2018 :

CVE-2017-5715 Spectre-BTB (previously known as Spectre Variant 2) Branch target injection

Systems with microprocessors utilizing speculative execution and indirect branch prediction may allow unauthorized disclosure of information to an attacker with local user access via a side-channel analysis.

CVE-2017-5753 Spectre-PHT (previously known as Spectre Variant 1) Bounds checking bypass Systems with microprocessors utilizing speculative execution and branch prediction may allow unauthorized disclosure of information to an attacker with local user access via a side-channel analysis.

CVE-2017-5754 Meltdown-US (previously known as Meltdown) Rogue data cache load Systems with microprocessors utilizing speculative execution and indirect branch prediction may allow unauthorized disclosure of information to an attacker with local user access via a side-channel analysis of the data cache.

Impact

F5 continues to investigate the impact of the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities on our products. F5 is focused onproviding patched releases as soon as we have fully tested and verified fixes. F5 will update this article with the most current information as soon as it is confirmed.

BIG-IP

First and foremost, there is no exposure on BIG-IP products by way ofthe data plane. All exposure is limited to the control plane (also known as the management plane).

Furthermore, on the control plane, the vulnerabilities are exploitable only by four authorized, authenticated account roles: Administrator, Resource Administrator, Manager, and iRules Manager. You must be authorized to access the system in one of these roles to even attempt to exploit the vulnerabilities.

All three vulnerabilities require an attacker who can provideand runbinary code of their choosing on the BIG-IP platform.

These conditions severely restrict the exposure risk of BIG-IP products.

For single-tenancy products, such as astandalone BIG-IP appliance, the risk is limited to a local, authorized user using one of the vulnerabilities to read information from memory that they would not normally be able to access, exceeding their privileges. Effectively, the risk in a single-tenancy situation is that a user may be able to access kernel-space memory, instead of being limited to their own user-space.

For multi-tenancy environments, such as cloud, VE, and Virtual Clustered Multiprocessing (vCMP), the same local risk applies as with single-tenancy environments local kernel memory access. Additionally, the risk of attacks across guests exists, or attacks against the hypervisor/host. In cloud and VE environments, preventing these new attacks falls on the hypervisor/host platform, outside the scope of F5's ability to support or patch. Please contact your cloud provider or hypervisor vendor to ensure their platforms or products are protected against Spectre and Meltdown.

For vCMP environments, F5 believes that while the Spectre-PHTand Meltdown-USattacks do offer a theoretical possibility of guest-to-guest or guest-to-host attacks, these would be very difficult to successfully conduct in the BIG-IP environment. The primary risk in the vCMP environment comes from Spectre-BTB, but this risk exists only when vCMP guests are configured to use a single core. If the vCMP guests are configured to use two or more cores, the Spectre-BTBvulnerability is eliminated.

F5 is working with our hardware component vendors to determine the scope of vulnerabilities across our various generations of hardware platforms. All of the information we currently have from our vendors is represented in this Security Advisory. We are working to obtain the remaining information from our vendors and will update the security advisory as we receive new information regarding our hardware platforms.

We are also testing the fixes produced by the Linux community. We are conducting anextensive test campaign to characterize the impact of the fixes on system performance and stabilityto ensure, as best we can, a good experience for our customers. We do not want to rush the process and release fixes without a full understanding of any potential issues. Given the limited exposure, as detailed above, the complexity of the fixes, and the potential issues that we and others have seen, we believe a detailed approach is warranted and that rushing a fix could result in an impact to system stability or unacceptable performance costs. We will update this article with details of our fixes as they become available.

To determine which vulnerabilities affect each platform and the processor type each platform uses, refer to the following table.

Note : In the following table, only one entry is shown for platform models that may have several variants. For example, BIG-IP 11000, BIG-IP 11050, BIG-IP 11050F, and BIG-IP 11050N are all vulnerable and included in the table as 'BIG-IP 110x0'. Some platforms may have multiple vendor processors, such as the iSeries platforms, which have one or more Intel core processors and may have a vulnerable ARM processor in one or more subsystems. F5 does not believe that ARM processors in these subsystems are accessible to attackers, unless some other code-execution vulnerability is present, but the information is being provided out of an abundance of caution.

Model Processor type Vulnerable to CVE-2017-5753 Spectre-PHT Vulnerable to CVE-2017-5715 Spectre-BTB Vulnerable to CVE-2017-5754 Meltdown-US VIPRION B21x0 Intel Y Y Y VIPRION B2250 Intel Y Y Y VIPRION B4100 AMD Y Y** N VIPRION B4200 AMD Y Y** N VIPRION B43x0 Intel Y Y Y VIPRION B44x0 Intel Y Y Y BIG-IP 800 Intel Y** N Y** BIG-IP 1600 Intel Y** N Y** BIG-IP 3600 Intel Y** N Y** BIG-IP 3900 Intel Y** N Y** BIG-IP2xx0 Intel Y Y Y BIG-IP4xx0 Intel Y Y Y BIG-IP5xx0 Intel Y Y Y BIG-IP7xx0 Intel Y Y Y BIG-IP10xx0 Intel Y Y Y BIG-IP12xx0 Intel Y Y Y BIG-IPi2x00 Intel, ARM Y Y Y BIG-IPi4x00 Intel, ARM Y Y Y BIG-IPi5x00 Intel, ARM Y Y Y BIG-IPi7x00 Intel, ARM Y Y Y BIG-IPi10x00 Intel, ARM Y Y Y BIG-IP6400 AMD Y Y** N BIG-IP6900 AMD Y Y** N BIG-IP89x0 AMD Y Y** N BIG-IP110x0 AMD Y Y** N

**Intel and AMD have not responded to requests for information relating to the specific processors used in these platforms.
Therefore, based on their public statements and in the interests of security, F5 will proceed as if these platforms are vulnerable.

Note : Platform models that have reached End of Technical Support (EoTS) will not be evaluated. For more information, refer toK4309: F5 platform lifecycle support policy.

BIG-IQ and Enterprise Manager

Systems with microprocessors that use speculative execution and indirect branch prediction may allow unauthorized disclosure of information to an attacker with local user access by way ofa side-channel analysis.

To determine which vulnerabilities affect each platform and the processor type each platform uses, refer to the following table.

Model Processor type Vulnerable to CVE-2017-5753 Spectre-PHT Vulnerable to CVE-2017-5715 Spectre-BTB Vulnerable to CVE-2017-5754 Meltdown-US BIG-IQ 7000 Intel Y Y Y Enterprise Manager 4000 Intel Y** N Y**

**Intel hasnot responded to requests for information relating to the specific processors used in these platforms. Therefore, based on their public statements and in the interests of security, F5 will proceed as if these platforms are vulnerable.

Note : Platform models that have reached End of Technical Support (EoTS) will not be evaluated. For more information, refer toK4309: F5 platform lifecycle support policy.

Traffix

Systems with microprocessors that use speculative execution and indirect branch prediction may allow unauthorized disclosure of information to an attacker with local user access by way of a side-channel analysis.

LineRate

Systems with microprocessors that use speculative execution and indirect branch prediction may allow unauthorized disclosure of information to an attacker with local user access by way of a side-channel analysis.

For products with None in the Versions known to be vulnerable column in the following table, there is no impact.

Detections

Analytics

F5 Networks BIG-IP : Side-channel processor vulnerabilities (K91229003)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 118702

Version 1.10

Version 1.9

Version 1.7

Version 1.6

Version 1.10 Oct 22, 2026, 12:02 AM Detection (corrected module name from AM to AAM; version now includes hotfix level in scan results. corrected version threshold, removing a false positive on a specific hotfix. corrected version ranges across several modules for more accurate detection) Logic Changes (restored a KB flag used by other scan checks. updated to current plugin format. restricts detection to systems with the Configuration utility component installed. restricts detection to affected hardware models. restricts detection to systems with affected components installed) Plugin Feed: 202610220002
Version 1.9 Jan 12, 2026, 2:57 PM Exploit attributes ("Exploit framework core" set to "True") Plugin Feed: 202601121457
Version 1.7 Feb 18, 2025, 11:54 PM Plugin metadata (CVSS 3 Change AC:H --> AC:L where needed) Plugin Feed: 202502182354
Version 1.6 Nov 3, 2023, 7:56 AM CVSSv2 score source (set to "CVE-2017-5754") Detection (updated detection logic) Plugin metadata Plugin Feed: 202311030756