K54252492 : Side-channel processor vulnerability CVE-2018-3693

Security Advisory Description

Systems with microprocessors utilizing speculative execution and branch prediction may allow unauthorized disclosure of information to an attacker with local user access via a speculative buffer overflow and side-channel analysis. (CVE-2018-3693 also known as Spectre or Spectre-NG Variant 1.1)

Bounds checking bypass - store

Impact

For products with Nonein the Versions known to be vulnerable column, there is no impact.

F5 continues to investigate the impact of the Spectre-NG 1.1 vulnerability on our products. F5 is also monitoring developments about Spectre-NG 1.2 and awaiting evaluation by hardware vendors. 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 their platforms or products are protected against Spectre-NG.

For vCMP environments, F5 believes that while the Spectre-NG Variant 1.1 attack 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 working to obtain the remaining information from our vendors and will update the security advisory as we receive new information regarding our hardware platforms.

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-2018-3693 Spectre-NG Variant 1.1
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

**Intel and AMD have not responded to requests for information relating to the specific processors used in these platforms. Therefore, based on their public statements and in the interests of security, F5 will proceed as if these platforms are vulnerable.

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.

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**

**Intel has not responded to requests for information relating to the specific processors used in these platforms. Therefore, based on their public statements and in the interests of security, F5 will proceed as if these platforms are vulnerable.

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.

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.