(RHSA-2018:1644) Important: qemu-kvm-rhev security 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 Load & Store instructions (a commonly used performance optimization). It relies on the presence of a precisely-defined instruction sequence in the privileged code as well as the fact that memory read from address to which a recent memory write has occurred may see an older value and subsequently cause an update 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 read privileged memory by conducting targeted cache side-channel attacks. (CVE-2018-3639)

Note: This is the qemu-kvm-rhev side of the CVE-2018-3639 mitigation.

Red Hat would like to thank Ken Johnson (Microsoft Security Response Center) and Jann Horn (Google Project Zero) for reporting this issue.