Side-channel attack in Kaby Lake and Intel Skylake - CVE-2018-5407
Published: November 6, 2018 / Updated: June 17, 2021
Vulnerability identifier: #VU15723
CSH Severity: Low
CVSS v4.0: CVSS:4.0/AV:P/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:P/U:Clear
CVE-ID: CVE-2018-5407
CWE-ID: CWE-208
Exploitation vector: Local access
Exploit availability:
Public exploit is available
Vendor: Intel
Affected software:
Kaby Lake
Intel Skylake
Kaby Lake
Intel Skylake
Detailed vulnerability description
The vulnerability allows a physical attacker to obtain potentially sensitive information.
The vulnerability exists due to due to execution of engine sharing on SMT (e.g.Hyper-Threading) architectures when improper handling of information by the processor. A physical attacker can construct a timing side channel to hijack information from processes that are running in the same core.
Note: the vulnerability has been dubbed as PortSmash microarchitecture bug.
How to mitigate CVE-2018-5407
Cybersecurity Help is currently unaware of any solutions addressing the vulnerability.