(RHSA-2018:0049) Important: ovirt-guest-agent-docker security and bug fix update

The ovirt-guest-agent-docker package provides the guest agent for Red Hat Linux Atomic Host virtual machines. The guest agent allows the Red Hat Virtualization Manager to receive internal guest events and retrieve information such as the IP address and the list of installed applications from the guest. Additionally the guest agent allows the Manager to execute specific commands, such as shut down or reboot, on guest virtual machines.

Security Fix(es):

• An industry-wide issue was found in the way many modern microprocessor designs have implemented speculative execution of instructions (a commonly used performance optimization). There are three primary variants of the issue which differ in the way the speculative execution can be exploited. Variant CVE-2017-5715 triggers the speculative execution by utilizing branch target injection. It relies on the presence of a precisely-defined instruction sequence in the privileged code as well as the fact that memory accesses may cause allocation into the microprocessor’s data cache even for speculatively executed instructions that never actually commit (retire). As a result, an unprivileged attacker could use this flaw to cross the syscall and guest/host boundaries and read privileged memory by conducting targeted cache side-channel attacks. (CVE-2017-5715)

Note: This is the ovirt-guest-agent-docker side of the CVE-2017-5715 mitigation.

Red Hat would like to thank Google Project Zero for reporting this issue.

Bug Fix(es):

• Previously, during Atomic host shutdown, the container was killed before the Guest Agent had a chance to send ‘session-shutdown’ message to VDSM host. This is now fixed. (BZ#1427849)