CVE-2020-0551

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Moderate Moderate Impact What does this mean?
3.3 CVSS v3 Base Score

Description

A flaw was found in Intel's microprocessors. Intel microprocessors contain an implementation weakness that allows for an 'inverse MDS' style attack to be performed during store operations (writes to memory) and are stuffed maliciously into microarchitectural buffers from which unsuspecting victim code will later (speculatively) execute them. This allows an attacker to control and steer (speculative) execution, possibly allowing them to exploit gadgets in existing code to leak sensitive data. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to data confidentiality.

Statement

CVE-2020-0551 is the CVE assigned specifically to the hardware implementation leading to this flaw. Unlike the L1TF microarchitectural issue, no additional CVE have been assigned at this time to cover operating systems or vmm/hypervisor specific implementations.

As this CVE is a flaw in specific hardware, not the operating system kernel, and operating system mitigations are already applied, Red Hat does not list the Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel package as “affected” by this CVE.

This does not imply that the flaw can not be exposed on systems running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on vulnerable hardware, only that the flaws exist in the hardware implementation and no additional changes are deemed necessary or practical to address this flaw at the software layer.

Existing mitigations released in Red Hat Enterprise Linux in response to Spectre V1 (This content is not included.https://access.redhat.com/security/vulnerabilities/speculativeexecution), L1TF (This content is not included.https://access.redhat.com/security/vulnerabilities/L1TF) and MDS (This content is not included.https://access.redhat.com/security/vulnerabilities/mds) should already provide significant barrier against exploitation of this attack vector and no new mitigation is planned at this time.

Mitigation

For hardware vulnerable to these attacks, there is no known mitigation other than to upgrade to hardware that is not vulnerable to this flaw.

Due to the high level of difficulty of the attack, and the performance impact which would be associated with any potential mitigations, there are currently no microcode or software mitigations for this issue other than previously existing Spectre V1 and SMAP mitigations described above.

Red Hat doesn't currently have knowledge of any real-world occurrences of this attack, so the risk of attack may be considered low. To further minimize the possibility of attacks related to this and other speculative issues, trusted and untrusted workloads can be isolated on separate systems.

For further details about potential mitigations, see Intel's LVI deep dive whitepaper (This content is not included.https://software.intel.com/security-software-guidance/insights/deep-dive-load-value-injection).

Additional Information

External References

Content from www.cve.org is not included.https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2020-0551

Content from nvd.nist.gov is not included.https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-0551

https://access.redhat.com/articles/load-value-injection-flaw

Content from software.intel.com is not included.https://software.intel.com/security-software-guidance/insights/deep-dive-introduction-speculative-execution-side-channel-methods

Content from software.intel.com is not included.https://software.intel.com/security-software-guidance/insights/deep-dive-load-value-injection

Content from software.intel.com is not included.https://software.intel.com/security-software-guidance/software-guidance

Affected Packages and Issued Red Hat Security Errata

Products / Services Components State Errata
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 kernel Not affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 kernel Not affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 kernel Not affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 kernel-rt Not affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 kernel Not affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 kernel-rt Not affected
Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2 kernel Not affected
Unless explicitly stated as not affected, all previous versions of packages in any minor update stream of a product listed here should be assumed vulnerable, although may not have been subject to full analysis.

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Important note

CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authorities (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications ).

The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown Red Hat NVD
CVSS v3 Base Score 3.3 5.6
Attack Vector Local Local
Attack Complexity Low High
Privileges Required Low Low
User Interaction None None
Scope Unchanged Changed
Confidentiality Impact Low High
Integrity Impact None None
Availability Impact None None

CVSS v3 Vector

Red Hat CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N

NVD CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N

Acknowledgements

Red Hat would like to thank Intel and industry partners for reporting this issue.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is Red Hat's CVSS v3 score or Impact different from other vendors?

 For open source software shipped by multiple vendors, the CVSS base scores may vary for each vendor's version depending on the version they ship, how they ship it, the platform, and even how the software is compiled. This makes scoring of vulnerabilities difficult for third-party vulnerability databases such as NVD that only provide a single CVSS base score for each vulnerability. Red Hat scores reflect how a vulnerability affects our products specifically.

For more information, see https://access.redhat.com/solutions/762393.

My product is listed as "Under investigation" or "Affected", when will Red Hat release a fix for this vulnerability?
  • "Under investigation" doesn't necessarily mean that the product is affected by this vulnerability. It only means that our Analysis Team is still working on determining whether the product is affected and how it is affected.
  • "Affected" means that our Analysis Team has determined that this product is affected by this vulnerability and might release a fix to address this in the near future.

What can I do if my product is listed as "Will not fix"?

 This depends mostly on the Impact of the vulnerability and the Life Cycle phase in which your product is currently in. Overall, you have the following options:
  • Upgrade to a supported product version that includes a fix for this vulnerability (recommended)
  • Apply a mitigation (if one exists)
  • Open a This content is not included.support case to request a prioritization of releasing a fix for this vulnerability

What is a mitigation?

 A mitigation is an action that can be taken to reduce the impact of a security vulnerability, without deploying any fixes.

I have a Red Hat product but it is not in the above list, is it affected?

 The listed products were found to include one or more of the components that this vulnerability affects. These products underwent a thorough evaluation to determine their affectedness by this vulnerability. Note that layered products (such as container-based offerings) that consume affected components from any of the products listed in this table may be affected and are not represented.

Why is my security scanner reporting my product as vulnerable to this vulnerability even though my product version is fixed or not affected?

 In order to maintain code stability and compatibility, Red Hat usually does not rebase packages to entirely new versions. Instead, we backport fixes and new features to an older version of the package we distribute. This can result in some security scanners that only consider the package version to report the package as vulnerable. To avoid this, we suggest that you use an approved vulnerability scanner from our This content is not included.Red Hat Vulnerability Scanner Certification program.