CVE-2019-19338
Kernel: KVM: export MSR_IA32_TSX_CTRL to guest - incomplete fix for TAA (CVE-2019-11135)
Severity
ModerateRed Hat Product Security
CVSS 3.0
Review impact separately from score.
Published · November 18, 2019
Updated · June 28, 2026
Description
A flaw was found in the fix for CVE-2019-11135, the way Intel CPUs handle speculative execution of instructions when a TSX Asynchronous Abort (TAA) error occurs. When a guest is running on a host CPU affected by the TAA flaw (TAA_NO=0), but is not affected by the MDS issue (MDS_NO=1), the guest was to clear the affected buffers by using a VERW instruction mechanism. But when the MDS_NO=1 bit was exported to the guests, the guests did not use the VERW mechanism to clear the affected buffers. This issue affects guests running on Cascade Lake CPUs and requires that host has 'TSX' enabled. Confidentiality of data is the highest threat associated with this vulnerability.
Statement
For additional information, please refer to the Red Hat Knowledgebase article: https://access.redhat.com/solutions/tsx-asynchronousabort
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
Please refer to the Red Hat Knowledgebase Transactional Synchronization Extensions (TSX) Asynchronous Abort article (https://access.redhat.com/solutions/tsx-asynchronousabort) for mitigation instructions.
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-205 · Observable Behavioral Discrepancy