VulnerabilityPublished 15 Jan 2018Updated 21 Nov 2025

Red Hat Security Advisory: Red Hat CloudForms 4.2 security update

Affects Red HatSource GCVE Database

Mentioned vulnerabilities

Severity

High

Rated by Threat Radar

Data as of 14 Nov 2026, 17:46 UTC

What to do

AI-suggested

Red Hat has released updated kernel packages that provide software mitigations for these speculative execution vulnerabilities on x86-64 architectures. Users should apply these security updates to benefit from the mitigations. Note that these mitigations may incur a performance penalty. Since the vulnerabilities stem from hardware design, complete elimination is not possible via software alone. No additional action beyond applying the official Red Hat kernel updates is indicated.

Description

This advisory addresses speculative execution vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel used by Red Hat CloudForms 4.2 virtual machines. The vulnerabilities, known as Spectre variants CVE-2017-5753, CVE-2017-5715, and Meltdown CVE-2017-5754, allow unprivileged attackers to read privileged memory via targeted cache side-channel attacks. These hardware-level flaws affect many modern microprocessors and cannot be fully fixed by software alone. The update provides software mitigations for x86-64 architectures, which may impact system performance.

Impact

Successful exploitation allows unprivileged attackers to read privileged memory, potentially exposing sensitive information across syscall and guest/host boundaries. The vulnerabilities affect the core Linux kernel used in CloudForms virtual machines, posing a risk of information disclosure. However, these are hardware-level issues mitigated by software updates that may reduce system performance. AMD processors are not affected by CVE-2017-5754. No known exploits in the wild have been reported at the time of this advisory.

Summary

Red Hat CloudForms 4.2 includes Linux kernel packages vulnerable to three speculative execution side-channel attacks: CVE-2017-5753 (bounds-check bypass), CVE-2017-5715 (branch target injection), and CVE-2017-5754 (rogue data cache load). These vulnerabilities exploit speculative execution to leak privileged memory contents to unprivileged attackers through cache timing attacks. The issue is rooted in hardware design and affects Intel x86-64 processors; AMD x86-64 processors are not affected by CVE-2017-5754. Red Hat released kernel updates providing software mitigations for these vulnerabilities on x86-64 architectures, acknowledging a potential performance penalty. The advisory credits Google Project Zero for reporting these issues.

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Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 14 Nov 2026, 17:46 UTC

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