Description
A flaw was found in the fix for CVE-2019-11135, in the Linux upstream kernel versions before 5.5 where, the way Intel CPUs handle speculative execution of instructions when a TSX Asynchronous Abort (TAA) error occurs. When a guest is running on a host CPU affected by the TAA flaw (TAA_NO=0), but is not affected by the MDS issue (MDS_NO=1), the guest was to clear the affected buffers by using a VERW instruction mechanism. But when the MDS_NO=1 bit was exported to the guests, the guests did not use the VERW mechanism to clear the affected buffers. This issue affects guests running on Cascade Lake CPUs and requires that host has 'TSX' enabled. Confidentiality of data is the highest threat associated with this vulnerability.
References (3)
Core 3
Core References
Mailing List, Patch, Third Party Advisory x_refsource_misc
https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2019/12/10/3
Issue Tracking, Patch, Third Party Advisory x_refsource_confirm
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2019-19338
Third Party Advisory x_refsource_misc
https://software.intel.com/security-software-guidance/insights/deep-dive-intel-transactional-synchronization-extensions-intel-tsx-asynchronous-abort
Scores
CVSS v3
5.5
EPSS
0.0009
EPSS Percentile
25.4%
Attack Vector
LOCAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Details
CWE
CWE-385
CWE-203
Status
published
Products (2)
linux/linux_kernel
< 5.5
redhat/enterprise_linux
6.0
Published
Jul 13, 2020
Tracked Since
Feb 18, 2026