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National Vulnerability Database

National Vulnerability Database

NVD

National Vulnerability Database
  1. Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-1998 Detail

Description

The Linux kernel allows userspace processes to enable mitigations by calling prctl with PR_SET_SPECULATION_CTRL which disables the speculation feature as well as by using seccomp. We had noticed that on VMs of at least one major cloud provider, the kernel still left the victim process exposed to attacks in some cases even after enabling the spectre-BTI mitigation with prctl. The same behavior can be observed on a bare-metal machine when forcing the mitigation to IBRS on boot command line. This happened because when plain IBRS was enabled (not enhanced IBRS), the kernel had some logic that determined that STIBP was not needed. The IBRS bit implicitly protects against cross-thread branch target injection. However, with legacy IBRS, the IBRS bit was cleared on returning to userspace, due to performance reasons, which disabled the implicit STIBP and left userspace threads vulnerable to cross-thread branch target injection against which STIBP protects.


Metrics

 
NVD enrichment efforts reference publicly available information to associate vector strings. CVSS information contributed by other sources is also displayed.
CVSS 4.0 Severity and Vector Strings:

NIST CVSS score
NIST: NVD
N/A
NVD assessment not yet provided.

References to Advisories, Solutions, and Tools

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Hyperlink Resource
https://github.com/google/security-research/security/advisories/GHSA-mj4w-6495-6crx Exploit  Third Party Advisory 
https://github.com/google/security-research/security/advisories/GHSA-mj4w-6495-6crx Exploit  Third Party Advisory 
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/6921ed9049bc7457f66c1596c5b78aec0dae4a9d Patch 
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/6921ed9049bc7457f66c1596c5b78aec0dae4a9d Patch 
https://kernel.dance/#6921ed9049bc7457f66c1596c5b78aec0dae4a9d Not Applicable 
https://kernel.dance/#6921ed9049bc7457f66c1596c5b78aec0dae4a9d Not Applicable 
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2023/05/msg00005.html Mailing List  Third Party Advisory 
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2023/05/msg00005.html Mailing List  Third Party Advisory 
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2023/05/msg00006.html Mailing List  Third Party Advisory 
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2023/05/msg00006.html Mailing List  Third Party Advisory 

Weakness Enumeration

CWE-ID CWE Name Source
CWE-203 Observable Discrepancy cwe source acceptance level NIST  
CWE-1303 Non-Transparent Sharing of Microarchitectural Resources Google Inc.  

Known Affected Software Configurations Switch to CPE 2.2

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Change History

5 change records found show changes

Quick Info

CVE Dictionary Entry:
CVE-2023-1998
NVD Published Date:
04/21/2023
NVD Last Modified:
11/21/2024
Source:
Google Inc.