VMware response to ‘L1 Terminal Fault - OS’ (L1TF - OS) Speculative-Execution vulnerability for VMware Virtual Appliances: CVE-2018-3620

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

The VMware Security Engineering, Communications, and Response group (vSECR) has investigated the impact CVE-2018-3620 may have on VMware products. This issue is classified as a Speculative-Execution vulnerability which requires Operating System-Specific Mitigations  which are defined in KB55636.

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Resolution

Evaluation Summary:

• CVE-2018-3620 has been classified as a potential local privilege escalation in the Moderate severity range. Please review our VMware Security Response Policies for information on severity classifications.
• CVE-2018-3620 has the potential of affecting VMware Virtual Appliances by way of the linux-based operating system that they ship on top of.
• Products that ship as an installable windows or linux binary are not directly affected, but patches may be required from the respective operating system vendor that these products are installed on. VMware recommends contacting your 3rd party operating system vendor to determine appropriate actions for mitigation of CVE-2018-3620.
• VMware hypervisors are not affected by CVE-2018-3620.

Unaffected Products

vSECR has completed evaluation of the following products and determined that under supported configurations they are not affected as there is no available path to execute arbitrary code without administrative privileges.

Note: Automated vulnerability scanners may report that these products are vulnerable to CVE-2018-3620 even though the issue is not exploitable. These products will still be updating their respective kernels in scheduled maintenance releases as a precautionary measure.

If a specific version number is not listed, then that entry refers to all supported versions of the appliance.
 

Products	Version	Evaluation	Workaround
VMware App Defense Appliance	Any	Unaffected	N/A
VMware Horizon DaaS Platform	Any	Unaffected	N/A
VMware Horizon Mirage	Any	Unaffected	N/A
VMware HCX	Any	Unaffected	N/A
VMware Integrated Openstack	Any	Unaffected	N/A
VMware IoT Pulse	Any	Unaffected	N/A
VMware Mirage	Any	Unaffected	N/A
VMware NSX for vSphere	Any	Unaffected	N/A
VMware NSX-T	Any	Unaffected	N/A
VMware Skyline Appliance	Any	Unaffected	N/A
VMware Unified Access Gateway	Any	Unaffected	N/A
VMware vCenter Server	5.5	Unaffected	N/A
VMware vCloud Availability for vCloud Director	Any	Unaffected	N/A
VMware vCloud Director Extender	Any	Unaffected	N/A
VMware vRealize Business for Cloud	Any	Unaffected	N/A
VMware vRealize Log Insight	Any	Unaffected	N/A
VMware vRealize Network Insight	Any	Unaffected	N/A
VMware vRealize Operations	Any	Unaffected	N/A
VMware vRealize Orchestrator	Any	Unaffected	N/A
VMware vSphere Replication	Any	Unaffected	N/A
VMware Workbench	Any	Unaffected	N/A

Potentially Affected Products
Information on potentially affected products including applicable workarounds can be found in VMSA-2018-0021.

Additional Information

L1TF related “esx.problem.hyperthreading.unmitigated” vCenter Server Updates: CVE-2018-3646