CVE-2017-5753
hw: cpu: speculative execution bounds-check bypass
Severity
ImportantRed Hat Product Security
CVSS 3.0
Review impact separately from score.
Published · January 4, 2018
Updated · October 31, 2026
Description
An industry-wide issue was found in the way many modern microprocessor designs have implemented speculative execution of instructions (a commonly used performance optimization). There are three primary variants of the issue which differ in the way the speculative execution can be exploited. Variant CVE-2017-5753 triggers the speculative execution by performing a bounds-check bypass. It relies on the presence of a precisely-defined instruction sequence in the privileged code as well as the fact that memory accesses may cause allocation 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 cross the syscall boundary and read privileged memory by conducting targeted cache side-channel attacks.
Statement
Red Hat Product Security is aware of this issue. Updates will be released as they become available. For additional information, please refer to the Red Hat Knowledgebase article: https://access.redhat.com/security/vulnerabilities/speculativeexecution
CVSS score applicability
The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.
Mitigation
No mitigation is specified in collected source.
CVSS / CWE
CVSS 3.0 · 5.5CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
CWE-385 · Covert Timing Channel