CVE-2024-36350 is a transient execution vulnerability classified under CWE-1421, which relates to the exposure of sensitive information in shared microarchitectural structures. This vulnerability affects AMD EPYC 7003 Series processors and arises from the processor's speculative execution mechanisms. During transient execution, the processor may temporarily execute instructions out-of-order or speculatively, accessing data that should not be accessible in the current architectural state. In this case, an attacker with local access and low privileges can exploit side channels to infer data from previous store operations that reside in shared microarchitectural buffers or caches. This leakage can expose privileged or sensitive information, potentially including cryptographic keys or other confidential data. The attack complexity is high, requiring detailed knowledge of the processor internals and precise timing measurements. The CVSS v3.1 score of 5.6 reflects a medium severity, with the vector indicating local attack vector (AV:L), high attack complexity (AC:H), low privileges required (PR:L), no user interaction (UI:N), and a scope change (S:C) with high confidentiality impact (C:H) but no impact on integrity (I:N) or availability (A:N). No patches or microcode updates are currently linked, and no known exploits have been reported in the wild, but the vulnerability is publicly disclosed and should be addressed proactively.

For European organizations, the primary impact of CVE-2024-36350 is the potential leakage of sensitive or privileged information from systems running AMD EPYC 7003 processors. This is particularly critical for data centers, cloud service providers, financial institutions, government agencies, and enterprises handling regulated data such as personal data under GDPR. Confidentiality breaches could lead to data exposure, intellectual property theft, or compromise of cryptographic keys, undermining trust and compliance. Although the attack requires local access and high complexity, insider threats or compromised virtual machines in multi-tenant cloud environments could exploit this vulnerability. The lack of impact on integrity and availability limits the scope to information disclosure, but the scope change in CVSS indicates that the attacker could access data beyond their privilege boundary. The medium severity suggests that while the risk is not immediate or trivial, it warrants timely mitigation to prevent escalation or targeted attacks.

To mitigate CVE-2024-36350, organizations should first monitor AMD's official channels for microcode updates or firmware patches addressing this vulnerability and apply them promptly once available. Operating system vendors may release kernel or hypervisor updates that implement mitigations such as speculative execution barriers, enhanced isolation between processes or virtual machines, and flushing of microarchitectural buffers on context switches. Organizations should enforce strict access controls to limit local access to trusted users only and restrict execution of untrusted or potentially malicious code on affected systems. In virtualized environments, isolating tenants and applying hypervisor-level mitigations can reduce risk. Additionally, continuous monitoring for anomalous behavior and side-channel attack indicators is recommended. Where feasible, consider deploying AMD processors from other series not affected by this vulnerability or alternative hardware architectures until patches are applied. Finally, review and update incident response plans to include scenarios involving microarchitectural side-channel attacks.