RHEL 7 : libvirt (RHSA-2018:1997)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 110711

Language:

Synopsis

The remote Red Hat host is missing a security update for libvirt.

Description

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 7 host has packages installed that are affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the RHSA-2018:1997 advisory.

The libvirt library contains a C API for managing and interacting with the virtualization capabilities of Linux and other operating systems. In addition, libvirt provides tools for remote management of virtualized systems.

Security Fix(es):

* An industry-wide issue was found in the way many modern microprocessor designs have implemented speculative execution of Load & Store instructions (a commonly used performance optimization). It relies on the presence of a precisely-defined instruction sequence in the privileged code as well as the fact that memory read from address to which a recent memory write has occurred may see an older value and subsequently cause an update into the microprocessor's data cache even for speculatively executed instructions that never actually commit (retire). As a result, an unprivileged attacker could use this flaw to read privileged memory by conducting targeted cache side-channel attacks. (CVE-2018-3639)

Note: This is the libvirt side of the CVE-2018-3639 mitigation that includes support for guests running on hosts with AMD processors.

Red Hat would like to thank Ken Johnson (Microsoft Security Response Center) and Jann Horn (Google Project Zero) for reporting this issue.

Bug Fix(es):

* Previously, the virtlogd service logged redundant AVC denial errors when a guest virtual machine was started. With this update, the virtlogd service no longer attempts to send shutdown inhibition calls to systemd, which prevents the described errors from occurring. (BZ#1573268)

* Prior to this update, guest virtual machine actions that use a python library in some cases failed and Hash operation not allowed during iteration error messages were logged. Several redundant thread access checks have been removed, and the problem no longer occurs. (BZ#1581364)

* The virsh capabilities command previously displayed an inaccurate number of 4 KiB memory pages on systems with very large amounts of memory. This update optimizes the memory diagnostic mechanism to ensure memory page numbers are displayed correctly on such systems. (BZ#1582418)

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for this issue but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

Solution

Update the RHEL libvirt package based on the guidance in RHSA-2018:1997.

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 110711

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2018-1997.nasl

Version: 1.13

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Red Hat Local Security Checks

Published: 6/27/2018

Updated: 11/5/2024

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6.7

Vendor

Vendor Severity: Important

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-2018-3639

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5.5

Temporal Score: 5

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:P/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon-driver-storage, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-client, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon-driver-storage-rbd, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-login-shell, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon-driver-storage-iscsi, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon-driver-storage-core, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon-driver-storage-logical, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon-driver-storage-scsi, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon-driver-storage-gluster, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-nss, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon-driver-lxc, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon-config-network, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon-lxc, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon-config-nwfilter, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon-driver-secret, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon-driver-nodedev, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon-driver-network, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon-driver-nwfilter, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-libs, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon-driver-qemu, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon-driver-storage-disk, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-devel, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:7, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon-driver-interface, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-docs, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-admin, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon-kvm, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-daemon-driver-storage-mpath, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:libvirt-lock-sanlock

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

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 6/26/2018

Vulnerability Publication Date: 5/22/2018

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2018-3639

CWE: 200

RHSA: 2018:1997

Detections

Analytics