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MEDIUM

openssl: Side-channel vulnerability on SMT/Hyper-Threading architectures (PortSmash)

Published Nov 15, 2018

Description

Simultaneous Multi-threading (SMT) in processors can enable local users to exploit software vulnerable to timing attacks via a side-channel timing attack on 'port contention'.

Affected products

Remediation

Red Hat statement

This is a timing side-channel flaw on processors which implement SMT/Hyper-Threading architectures. It can result in leakage of secret data in applications such as OpenSSL that has secret dependent control flow at any granularity level. In order to exploit this flaw, the attacker needs to run a malicious process on the same core of the processor as the victim process.

Red Hat mitigation

At this time Red Hat Engineering is working on patches for openssl package in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to address this issue. Until fixes are available, users are advised to review the guidance supplied in the L1 Terminal Fault vulnerability article: https://access.redhat.com/security/vulnerabilities/L1TF and decide what their exposure across shared CPU threads are and act accordingly.

Metrics

References (33)

Change history (0)

No recorded changes yet.

Sources
CVE.org / MITRE
Status PUBLISHED
Assigner certcc
Published Nov 15, 2018
Updated Aug 5, 2024
Reserved Jan 12, 2018
NVD
Status Modified
Modified Jun 17, 2026
Red Hat
Severity Moderate
Public date Oct 30, 2018