Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2019-19338

medium Nessus Plugin ID 245993

Synopsis

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed with a vulnerability that the vendor indicates will not be patched.

Description

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed that are impacted by a vulnerability without a vendor supplied patch available.

- 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.
(CVE-2019-19338)

Note that Nessus relies on the presence of the package as reported by the vendor.

Solution

There is no known solution at this time.

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 245993

File Name: unpatched_CVE_2019_19338.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Misc.

Published: 8/8/2025

Updated: 8/8/2025

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 4.4

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 Score Source: CVE-2019-19338

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5.5

Temporal Score: 4.8

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:U/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:14.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-azure, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-aws, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:18.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-lts-xenial, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-hwe-edge, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/cpu, global_settings/vendor_unpatched, Host/OS/identifier

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Vulnerability Publication Date: 2/4/2020

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2019-19338

Detections

Analytics