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Spectre SWAPGS gadget vulnerability CVE-2019-1125

Description

An information disclosure vulnerability exists when certain central processing units (CPU) speculatively access memory, aka 'Windows Kernel Information Disclosure Vulnerability'. This CVE ID is unique from CVE-2019-1071, CVE-2019-1073. ([CVE-2019-1125](<https://vulners.com/cve/CVE-2019-1125>) also known as Spectre SWAPGS gadget vulnerability) A Spectre gadget was found in the Linux kernel's implementation of system interrupts. An attacker with unprivileged local access could use this information to reveal private data through a Spectre-like side channel. Impact F5 continues to investigate the impact of the Spectre SWAPGS gadget vulnerability on our products. F5 is focused on providing patched releases as soon as we have fully tested and verified fixes. F5 will update this article with the most current information as soon as it is confirmed. BIG-IP First and foremost, there is no exposure on BIG-IP products by way of the data plane. All exposure is limited to the control plane (also known as the management plane). Furthermore, on the control plane, the vulnerability is exploitable only by four authorized, authenticated account roles: Administrator, Resource Administrator, Manager, and iRules Manager. You must be authorized to access the system in one of these roles to even attempt to exploit the vulnerability. This vulnerability requires an attacker who can provide and run binary code of their choosing on the BIG-IP platform. These conditions severely restrict the exposure risk of BIG-IP products. For single-tenancy products, such as a standalone BIG-IP appliance, the risk is limited to a local, authorized user using this vulnerability to read information from memory that they would not normally be able to access, exceeding their privileges. Effectively, the risk in a single-tenancy situation is that a user may be able to access kernel-space memory, instead of being limited to their own user-space. For multi-tenancy environments, such as cloud, VE, and Virtual Clustered Multiprocessing (vCMP), the same local risk applies as with single-tenancy environments - local kernel memory access. Additionally, the risk of attacks across guests exists, or attacks against the hypervisor/host. In cloud and VE environments, preventing these new attacks falls on the hypervisor/host platform, outside the scope of F5's ability to support or patch. Please contact your cloud provider or hypervisor vendor to ensure that their platforms or products are protected against this Spectre vulnerability. For vCMP environments, F5 believes that while the Spectre SWAPGS gadget vulnerability does offer a theoretical possibility of guest-to-guest or guest-to-host attacks, these would be very difficult to successfully conduct in the BIG-IP environment. F5 is working with our hardware component vendors to determine the scope of this vulnerability across our various generations of hardware platforms. All of the information we currently have from our vendors is represented in this Security Advisory. We are also testing the fixes produced by the Linux community. We are conducting an extensive test campaign to characterize the impact of the fixes on system performance and stability to ensure, as best we can, a good experience for our customers. We do not want to rush the process and release fixes without a full understanding of any potential issues. Given the limited exposure, as detailed above, the complexity of the fixes, and the potential issues that we and others have seen, we believe a detailed approach is warranted and that rushing a fix could result in an impact to system stability or unacceptable performance costs. We will update this article with details of our fixes as they become available. To determine if this vulnerability affects a platform and the processor type each platform uses, refer to the following table. **Note**: In the following table, only one entry is shown for platform models that may have several variants. For example, BIG-IP 11000, BIG-IP 11050, BIG-IP 11050F, and BIG-IP 11050N are all vulnerable and included in the table as "BIG-IP 110x0". Some platforms may have multiple vendor processors, such as the iSeries platforms, which have one or more Intel core processors and may have a vulnerable ARM processor in one or more subsystems. F5 does not believe that ARM processors in these subsystems are accessible to attackers, unless some other code-execution vulnerability is present, but the information is being provided out of an abundance of caution. Model | Processor type | Vulnerable to CVE-2019-1125 Spectre SWAPGS gadget vulnerability ---|---|--- VIPRION B21x0 | Intel | Y VIPRION B2250 | Intel | Y VIPRION B4100 | AMD | Y VIPRION B4200 | AMD | Y VIPRION B43x0 | Intel | Y VIPRION B44x0 | Intel | Y BIG-IP 800 | Intel | Y BIG-IP 1600 | Intel | Y BIG-IP 3600 | Intel | Y BIG-IP 3900 | Intel | Y BIG-IP 2xx0 | Intel | Y BIG-IP 4xx0 | Intel | Y BIG-IP 5xx0 | Intel | Y BIG-IP 7xx0 | Intel | Y BIG-IP 10xx0 | Intel | Y BIG-IP 12xx0 | Intel | Y BIG-IP i2x00 | Intel, ARM | Y BIG-IP i4x00 | Intel, ARM | Y BIG-IP i5x00 | Intel, ARM | Y BIG-IP i7x00 | Intel, ARM | Y BIG-IP i10x00 | Intel, ARM | Y BIG-IP 6400 | AMD | Y BIG-IP 6900 | AMD | Y BIG-IP 89x0 | AMD | Y BIG-IP 110x0 | AMD | Y **Note**: Platform models that have reached End of Technical Support (EoTS) will not be evaluated. For more information, refer to [K4309: F5 platform lifecycle support policy](<https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K4309>). BIG-IQ and Enterprise Manager Systems with microprocessors that use speculative execution and indirect branch prediction may allow unauthorized disclosure of information to an attacker with local user access by way of a side-channel analysis. To determine if this vulnerability affects each platform and the processor type each platform uses, refer to the following table. Model | Processor type | Vulnerable to CVE-2018-3693 Spectre-NG Variant 1.1 ---|---|--- BIG-IQ 7000 | Intel | Y Enterprise Manager 4000 | Intel | Y **Note**: Platform models that have reached End of Technical Support (EoTS) will not be evaluated. For more information, refer to [K4309: F5 platform lifecycle support policy](<https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K4309>). Traffix Systems with microprocessors that use speculative execution and indirect branch prediction may allow unauthorized disclosure of information to an attacker with local user access by way of a side-channel analysis.


Affected Software


CPE Name Name Version
big-ip (ltm, aam, afm, analytics, apm, asm, dns, edge gateway, fps, gtm, link controller, pem, webaccelerator) 15.1.0
enterprise manager 3.1.1
big-iq centralized management 7.1.0
f5 iworkflow 2.3.0
traffix sdc 5.1.0

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