VMware vSphere, Workstation and Fusion updates add Hypervisor-Assisted Guest Remediation for speculative execution issue

New speculative-execution control mechanism for Virtual Machines

Updates of vCenter Server, ESXi, Workstation and Fusion virtualize the new speculative-execution control mechanism for Virtual Machines (VMs). As a result, a patched Guest Operating System (Guest OS) can remediate the Branch Target Injection issue (CVE-2017-5715). This issue may allow for information disclosure between processes within the VM.

To remediate CVE-2017-5715 in the Guest OS the following VMware and third party requirements must be met. Please note that these points are meant to be a brief overview. For a more in-depth explaination of the mitigation process please see VMware Knowledge Base Article 52085.

VMware Requirements

Third party Requirements

Column 5 of the following table lists the action required to remediate the vulnerability in each release, if a solution is available.