Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities

Last Updated: 08/01/2018 10.00

Relevant CVE's: CVE-2017-5753, CVE-2017-5715, CVE-2017-5754

Integrity360 is actively monitoring two new threats known as "Meltdown" and "Spectre". 

The Threat

These threats exploit vulnerabilities in CPU modern processors, including PCs, laptops, mobile devices and also impact cloud implementations. 

These hardware bugs may allow malicious code to access sensitive system data. This data could include passwords or data in use by other users on the machine, such as confidential or personal information.

While the issue itself is quite serious, the exploitation of these vulnerabilities requires local access and the ability to execute code. These factors minimise the risk to appliance based solutions. Additionally, while all devices using the affected chips are vulnerable, security appliances are hardened devices so are significantly harder to exploit if best practices are in place.

Recommendations

• Apply patches as they become available from the relevant vendors. Please see a list of responses from our vendor partners below. 
• While common cloud platforms such as Azure, AWS and Google Cloud Platform have been working with OS providers to patch the underlying cloud infrastructure, users still need to patch machines that they are responsible for in the cloud.
• Patching should also be carried out on endpoints, IoT devices and mobile devices as they are more prone to being targeted and compromised.  

Vendor Response

Please click on the relevant link below for the vendor update:

• Check Point
• Cylance
• F5
• Cisco
• Juniper
• McAfee
• Fortinet
• Citrix
• PulseSecure
• RSA (login required)
• CrowdStrike (Login Required)

Integrity360 will continue to actively monitor these vulnerabilities and provide updates on this page as new intelligence and recommendations become available.

More Information

For more information on these vulnerabilities please check the related content links listed below.