(RHSA-2018:0055) Important: qemu-kvm-rhev security and bug fix update

KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on a variety of architectures. The qemu-kvm-rhev packages provide the user-space component for running virtual machines that use KVM in environments managed by Red Hat products.

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 qemu-kvm-rhev side of the CVE-2017-5715 mitigation.

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

Bug Fix(es):

• Hot-unplugging Virtual Function I/O (VFIO) devices previously failed when performed after hot-unplugging a vhost network device. This update fixes the underlying code, and the VFIO device is unplugged correctly in the described circumstances. (BZ#1498145)