CVE-2019-5489

A new software page cache side channel attack scenario was discovered in operating systems that implement the very common ‘page cache’ caching mechanism. A malicious user/process could use ‘in memory’ page-cache knowledge to infer access timings to shared memory and gain knowledge which can be used to reduce effectiveness of cryptographic strength by monitoring algorithmic behavior, infer access patterns of memory to determine code paths taken, and exfiltrate data to a blinded attacker through page-granularity access times as a side-channel.