VulnerabilityPublished 5 Jan 2018Updated 21 Nov 2025

Red Hat Security Advisory: vdsm security update

Affects Red Hat vdsmSource GCVE Database

Mentioned vulnerabilities

CVE-2017-5715

Severity

High

Rated by Threat Radar

Data as of 13 Nov 2026, 18:31 UTC

What to do

AI-suggested

Red Hat has issued a security update for the VDSM service to mitigate CVE-2017-5715. Users should apply the official Red Hat security update to ensure protection. Since this is part of a coordinated industry-wide mitigation, applying the vendor-provided fix is the recommended action.

Description

This advisory addresses a security issue in the VDSM service used by Red Hat virtualization management. The vulnerability relates to the speculative execution side-channel attack known as CVE-2017-5715 (Branch Target Injection), which can allow an unprivileged attacker to read privileged memory across syscall and guest/host boundaries. The issue stems from how modern microprocessors perform speculative execution, potentially leaking sensitive data via cache side channels. This update represents the VDSM component's mitigation for this industry-wide vulnerability.

Impact

An unprivileged attacker could exploit this vulnerability to bypass syscall and guest/host boundaries, potentially reading privileged memory. This could lead to disclosure of sensitive information from the host or other virtual machines. The impact is significant in virtualized environments where VDSM manages critical host and VM resources.

Summary

The VDSM service in Red Hat virtualization environments was affected by the speculative execution vulnerability CVE-2017-5715, also known as Branch Target Injection. This flaw allows an attacker to exploit the processor's speculative execution to infer privileged memory contents through cache side-channel attacks. The vulnerability is part of a broader class of speculative execution issues impacting many modern CPUs. The Red Hat advisory details the VDSM side of the mitigation efforts to address this flaw, which is critical for maintaining isolation between virtual machines and the host system.

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Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 13 Nov 2026, 18:31 UTC

Technical details

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