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Bug 663502 (CVE-2018-3639, XSA-263) - Speculative Store Bypass (Spectre v4)
Summary: Speculative Store Bypass (Spectre v4)
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: CVE-2018-3639, XSA-263
Product: Gentoo Security
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Vulnerabilities (show other bugs)
Hardware: All Linux
: Normal normal
Assignee: Gentoo Security
URL: http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-2...
Whiteboard: B3 [noglsa cve]
Keywords:
Depends on: 664052 664054 664062
Blocks:
  Show dependency tree
 
Reported: 2018-08-13 10:54 UTC by D'juan McDonald (domhnall)
Modified: 2019-04-27 19:17 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

See Also:
Package list:
Runtime testing required: ---


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Description D'juan McDonald (domhnall) 2018-08-13 10:54:08 UTC
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

            Xen Security Advisory CVE-2018-3639 / XSA-263

                       Speculative Store Bypass

ISSUE DESCRIPTION
=================

Contemporary high performance processors may use a technique commonly
known as Memory Disambiguation, whereby speculative execution may
proceed past unresolved stores.  This opens a speculative sidechannel in
which loads from an address which have had a recent store can observe
and operate on the older, stale, value.

For more details, see:
  https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=1528
  https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/security-center/advisory/intel-sa-00115.html
  https://www.amd.com/securityupdates

IMPACT
======

An attacker who can locate or create a suitable code gadget in a
different privilege context may be able to infer the content of
arbitrary memory accessible to that other privilege context.

At the time of writing, there are no known vulnerable gadgets in the
compiled hypervisor code.  Xen has no interfaces which allow JIT code
to be provided.  Therefore we believe that the hypervisor itself is
not vulnerable.  Additionally, we do not think there is a viable
information leak by one Xen guest against another non-cooperating
guest.

However, in most configurations, within-guest information leak is
possible.  Mitigation for this generally depends on guest changes (for
which you must consult your OS vendor) *and* on hypervisor support,
provided in this advisory.

VULNERABLE SYSTEMS
==================

Systems running all versions of Xen are affected.

Processors from all vendors are affected to different extents.

Further communication will be made for Arm. See
https://developer.arm.com/support/arm-security-updates/speculative-processor-vulnerability
for more details.

MITIGATION
==========

This issue can be mitigated with a combination of software and firmware
changes.

RESOLUTION
==========

This is a hardware bug.  The primary mitigation in Xen context is
modification of guests, especially JITs in guests, to avoid generating
vulnerable code.  Such modifications do not require support from Xen.

Alternatively, the following patches provide some workarounds:

On AMD hardware, for Fam15h processors and later, the patches offer a
host-wide global control for whether Memory Disambiguation is enabled
(default) or disabled.  Controls are not virtualised for guests.  When
the global control is set to disabled (`spec-ctrl=ssbd' on the
hypervisor command line), the vulnerability is eliminated without the
need for other guest or hypervisor changes.

On Intel hardware, a microcode update is required in order to work
around the problem by disabling memory disambiguation.  Consult your
hardware vendor or your dom0 OS distributor for the firmware/microcode
update.  With the microcode update in place, the patches offer a
host-wide control (which would eliminate the vulnerability on the
whole system without guest changes), and virtualised controls for
guests to use (which addresses the issue in a guest-specific manner).
Consult your guest operating system vendors, for further information
and advice.

(Additionally, host firmware may be vulnerable and may require updates
for that reason.  Consult your hardware vendor.)

xsa263-unstable/*.patch  xen-unstable
xsa263-4.10/*.patch      Xen 4.10.x
xsa263-4.9/*.patch       Xen 4.9.x
xsa263-4.8/*.patch       Xen 4.8.x
xsa263-4.7/*.patch       Xen 4.7.x
xsa263-4.6/*.patch       Xen 4.6.x


@maintainer(s): In case of bump, please call for stabilization when ready.

Gentoo Security Padawan
(domhnall)
Comment 1 kfm 2018-08-15 03:03:54 UTC
Also known as Spectre Variant 3a. Adding kernel@ because this isn't simply a matter for Xen users. These are the earliest mainline kernel releases in which mitigating patches started to appear:

* 4.4.144
* 4.9.102
* 4.14.43
* 4.16.11

# cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/spec_store_bypass 
Mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp
Comment 2 kfm 2018-08-15 03:14:35 UTC
Sorry, Variant 4, not 3a. It's getting harder to keep track of them all :(
Comment 3 kfm 2018-08-15 03:32:06 UTC
>=4.17 can be added to the aforementioned list of kernels. Also, note the new "spec_store_bypass_disable" parameter, per https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.html.
Comment 4 kfm 2018-08-19 11:29:30 UTC
QEMU 3.0 provides support for the "ssbd" CPUID flag. See also bug 664052.
Comment 5 kfm 2018-08-19 12:10:40 UTC
I've requested that the patch to support ssbd be backported to qemu-2.12 - and have attached said patch - in bug 664054.
Comment 6 Larry the Git Cow gentoo-dev 2018-08-19 17:49:35 UTC
The bug has been referenced in the following commit(s):

https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/commit/?id=55679e9cfb47c803931db687f2e3f510d66d91d1

commit 55679e9cfb47c803931db687f2e3f510d66d91d1
Author:     Matthias Maier <tamiko@gentoo.org>
AuthorDate: 2018-08-19 17:37:22 +0000
Commit:     Matthias Maier <tamiko@gentoo.org>
CommitDate: 2018-08-19 17:37:22 +0000

    app-emulation/qemu: drop version 2.11.*
    
    Bug: https://bugs.gentoo.org/663502
    Package-Manager: Portage-2.3.47, Repoman-2.3.10

 app-emulation/qemu/Manifest                        |   2 -
 .../qemu/files/qemu-2.11.0-glibc-2.27.patch        |  54 --
 app-emulation/qemu/qemu-2.11.1-r2.ebuild           | 805 ---------------------
 3 files changed, 861 deletions(-)
Comment 7 Yury German Gentoo Infrastructure gentoo-dev 2019-04-27 19:17:46 UTC
This has been patched in 2018.
NO GLSA