CVE-2020-0550

A flaw was found in the Intel CPU's cache coherency mechanism. A microarchitectural (hardware) implementation issue that could allow an unprivileged local attacker to bypass conventional system security controls to infer on-CPU Level 1 cache contents is present. At this time, this specific flaw is only known to affect Intel-based processors. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to data confidentiality.

CVE-2020-0550 is the CVE assigned specifically to the hardware implementation leading to this flaw. Unlike the L1TF microarchitectural issue, no additional CVE have been assigned at this time to cover operating systems or vmm/hypervisor specific implementations.

As this CVE is a flaw in specific hardware, not the operating system kernel, and operating system mitigations are already applied, Red Hat does not list the Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel package as “affected” by this CVE.

This does not imply that the flaw can not be exposed on systems running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on vulnerable hardware, only that the flaw exists in the hardware implementation and no additional changes are deemed necessary or practical to address this flaw at the software layer.

Existing mitigations released in Red Hat Enterprise Linux in response to Spectre V1 (https://access.redhat.com/security/vulnerabilities/speculativeexecution), L1TF (https://access.redhat.com/security/vulnerabilities/L1TF) and MDS (https://access.redhat.com/security/vulnerabilities/mds) should already provide significant barrier against exploitation of this attack vector and no new mitigation is planned at this time.

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.