Microprocessor Side-Channel Vulnerabilities (CVE-2018-3639 and CVE-2018-3640): Impact on RSA products

000036372

000036372

RSA is aware of the side-channel vulnerabilities known as Speculative Store Bypass (CVE-2018-3639) and Rogue System Register Read (CVE-2018-3640) affecting many modern microprocessors that were published by researchers from Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) and Google Project Zero on 21 May 2018. An unprivileged attacker with local user access to the system could potentially exploit these vulnerabilities to read privileged memory data. For more information, please review security updates posted by Intel.
 
RSA is investigating the impact of these issues on our products. We will update this article regularly with impact details and mitigation steps as they become available. Mitigation steps may vary by product and may require updates to processor microcode (BIOS), Operating System (OS), Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), and other software components.
 
RSA recommends customers follow security best practices for malware protection to help prevent possible exploitation of these vulnerabilities until any future updates can be applied. These practices include, but are not limited to, promptly deploying software updates, avoiding unknown hyperlinks and websites, never downloading files or applications from unknown sources, and employing up-to-date anti-virus and advanced threat protection solutions.
 
For information on other Dell products, please see  http://dell.com/support/speculative-store-bypass.

• Intel Security Advisory INTEL-SA-00115: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/security-center/advisory/intel-sa-00115.html
• Intel Security Microsite: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/facts-about-side-channel-analysis-and-intel-products.html
• ADV180012 - Microsoft Guidance for Speculative Store Bypass for CVE-2018-3639: https://portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-US/security-guidance/advisory/ADV180012
• ADV180013 - Microsoft Guidance for Rogue System Register Read for CVE-2018-3640: https://portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-us/security-guidance/advisory/ADV180013
• Microsoft Security Research and Defense blog: https://aka.ms/sescsrdssb
• Google Project Zero Blog: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=1528

 
Note 1: It is a software product only. Reported vulnerabilities are best mitigated via firmware and operating system updates. Customers are strongly advised to patch their host systems where the product is installed.

Note 2: To take advantage of these vulnerabilities, an attacker first must be able to run malicious code on the targeted system. The product is designed to prevent users from loading and executing any external and/or untrusted code on the system. The reported issues do not introduce any additional security risk to the product.

Note 3: ​To take advantage of these vulnerabilities, an attacker first must be able to run malicious code on the targeted system. Access to the product to load external and/or potentially untrusted code is restricted to users with root or root-equivalent privileges only. The reported issues do not introduce any additional security risk to the product, provided the recommended best practices to protect the access of highly privileged account are followed.

For information on other Dell products, please see  http://dell.com/support/speculative-store-bypass.