SUSE SLED12 / SLES12 Security Update : kernel (SUSE-SU-2018:0012-1) (Meltdown) (Spectre)

high Nessus Plugin ID 105576

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Synopsis

The remote SUSE host is missing one or more security updates.

Description

The SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP2 kernel was updated to receive various security and bugfixes. This update adds mitigations for various side channel attacks against modern CPUs that could disclose content of otherwise unreadable memory (bnc#1068032).

- CVE-2017-5753 / 'SpecÃÂ§reAttack': Local attackers on systems with modern CPUs featuring deep instruction pipelining could use attacker controllable speculative execution over code patterns in the Linux Kernel to leak content from otherwise not readable memory in the same address space, allowing retrieval of passwords, cryptographic keys and other secrets. This problem is mitigated by adding speculative fencing on affected code paths throughout the Linux kernel.

- CVE-2017-5715 / 'SpectreAttack': Local attackers on systems with modern CPUs featuring branch prediction could use mispredicted branches to speculatively execute code patterns that in turn could be made to leak other non-readable content in the same address space, an attack similar to CVE-2017-5753. This problem is mitigated by disabling predictive branches, depending on CPU architecture either by firmware updates and/or fixes in the user-kernel privilege boundaries. Please also check with your CPU / Hardware vendor on updated firmware or BIOS images regarding this issue. As this feature can have a performance impact, it can be disabled using the 'nospec' kernel commandline option.

- CVE-2017-5754 / 'MeltdownAttack': Local attackers on systems with modern CPUs featuring deep instruction pipelining could use code patterns in userspace to speculative executive code that would read otherwise read protected memory, an attack similar to CVE-2017-5753. This problem is mitigated by unmapping the Linux Kernel from the user address space during user code execution, following a approach called 'KAISER'.
The terms used here are 'KAISER' / 'Kernel Address Isolation' and 'PTI' / 'Page Table Isolation'. Note that this is only done on affected platforms. This feature can be enabled / disabled by the 'pti=[on|off|auto]' or 'nopti' commandline options. Also the following unrelated security bugs were fixed :

- CVE-2017-17806: The HMAC implementation (crypto/hmac.c) in the Linux kernel did not validate that the underlying cryptographic hash algorithm is unkeyed, allowing a local attacker able to use the AF_ALG-based hash interface (CONFIG_CRYPTO_USER_API_HASH) and the SHA-3 hash algorithm (CONFIG_CRYPTO_SHA3) to cause a kernel stack-based buffer overflow by executing a crafted sequence of system calls that encounter a missing SHA-3 initialization (bnc#1073874).

- CVE-2017-17805: The Salsa20 encryption algorithm in the Linux kernel did not correctly handle zero-length inputs, allowing a local attacker able to use the AF_ALG-based skcipher interface (CONFIG_CRYPTO_USER_API_SKCIPHER) to cause a denial of service (uninitialized-memory free and kernel crash) or have unspecified other impact by executing a crafted sequence of system calls that use the blkcipher_walk API. Both the generic implementation (crypto/salsa20_generic.c) and x86 implementation (arch/x86/crypto/salsa20_glue.c) of Salsa20 were vulnerable (bnc#1073792).

The update package also includes non-security fixes. See advisory for details.

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the SUSE security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

Solution

To install this SUSE Security Update use YaST online_update.
Alternatively you can run the command listed for your product :

SUSE Linux Enterprise Workstation Extension 12-SP2:zypper in -t patch SUSE-SLE-WE-12-SP2-2018-11=1

SUSE Linux Enterprise Software Development Kit 12-SP2:zypper in -t patch SUSE-SLE-SDK-12-SP2-2018-11=1

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for Raspberry Pi 12-SP2:zypper in -t patch SUSE-SLE-RPI-12-SP2-2018-11=1

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12-SP2:zypper in -t patch SUSE-SLE-SERVER-12-SP2-2018-11=1

SUSE Linux Enterprise Live Patching 12:zypper in -t patch SUSE-SLE-Live-Patching-12-2018-11=1

SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability 12-SP2:zypper in -t patch SUSE-SLE-HA-12-SP2-2018-11=1

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12-SP2:zypper in -t patch SUSE-SLE-DESKTOP-12-SP2-2018-11=1

OpenStack Cloud Magnum Orchestration 7:zypper in -t patch SUSE-OpenStack-Cloud-Magnum-Orchestration-7-2018-11=1

To bring your system up-to-date, use 'zypper patch'.

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 105576

File Name: suse_SU-2018-0012-1.nasl

Version: 3.12

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: SuSE Local Security Checks

Published: 1/4/2018

Updated: 9/10/2019

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: High

Score: 8.4

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.2

Temporal Score: 6.3

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

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.8

Temporal Score: 7.5

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

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:novell:suse_linux:12, p-cpe:/a:novell:suse_linux:kernel-default-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:novell:suse_linux:kernel-default-base, p-cpe:/a:novell:suse_linux:kernel-default-debugsource, p-cpe:/a:novell:suse_linux:kernel-default-devel, p-cpe:/a:novell:suse_linux:kernel-default-base-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:novell:suse_linux:kernel-syms, p-cpe:/a:novell:suse_linux:kernel-default, p-cpe:/a:novell:suse_linux:kernel-default-extra, p-cpe:/a:novell:suse_linux:kernel-default-man, p-cpe:/a:novell:suse_linux:kernel-default-extra-debuginfo

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

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 1/4/2018

Vulnerability Publication Date: 12/20/2017

Exploitable With

CANVAS (CANVAS)

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2017-17805, CVE-2017-17806, CVE-2017-5715, CVE-2017-5753, CVE-2017-5754

IAVA: 2018-A-0019, 2018-A-0020

Detections

Analytics

SUSE SLED12 / SLES12 Security Update : kernel (SUSE-SU-2018:0012-1) (Meltdown) (Spectre)

high Nessus Plugin ID 105576

Synopsis

Description

Solution

See Also

Plugin Details

Risk Information

VPR

CVSS v2

CVSS v3

Vulnerability Information

Exploitable With

Reference Information