CVE Database›Document archive›CVE-2017-5753

CVE-2017-5753

hw: cpu: speculative execution bounds-check bypass

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Severity

Important

Red Hat Product Security

5.5

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 · 5.5
CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

CWE-385 · Covert Timing Channel