Bug 157631

Summary:	CAN-2005-0109 timing attack on OpenSSL with HT
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4	Reporter:	Mark J. Cox <mjc>
Component:	openssl	Assignee:	Tomas Mraz <tmraz>
Status:	CLOSED ERRATA	QA Contact:	Brian Brock <bbrock>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	4.0	CC:	barryn, joshkel, k.georgiou, kms, pere, t.h.amundsen
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	Security
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:	impact=moderate,reported=20050307,source=secalert,public=20050513
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2005-06-01 13:32:44 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Mark J. Cox 2005-05-13 08:53:21 UTC

http://www.daemonology.net/hyperthreading-considered-harmful/ describes a timing
attack against certain processors where a local user can cause an information
leak from applications.  This could allow, for example, an untrusted local user
to gain access to portions of cryptographic keys.

Note that for an attack to be sucessful you need to be running on an affected
processor, have a malicious local user, and be doing operations with a valuable
private key.

The OpenSSL team are working on a patch that will mitigate this issue and remove
the ability to do timing attacks (of any nature) on private key operations.  We
will look at backporting and applying this patch and producing OpenSSL updates.

Comment 1 Mark J. Cox 2005-05-13 13:23:37 UTC

(Just to clarify, we'll also be taking a look at other packages that deal with
private key operations that may be susceptable to similar attacks)

Comment 2 Frank Ch. Eigler 2005-05-13 15:39:36 UTC

From a D.J.Bernstein posting on comp.arch:

...
Osvik and Tromer made clear months ago that hyperthreading needed to be
turned off for security. They've been advertising information disclosure
through hyperthreading since at least February. See, for example, the
``Other People's Cache---HyperAttacks with HyperThreading'' abstract in
   http://www.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/sista-cosic-docarch/template.php?page=activities
...

Comment 4 Tomas Mraz 2005-05-19 18:20:10 UTC

Fixed in FC development.

Comment 6 Josh Bressers 2005-06-01 13:32:44 UTC

An advisory has been issued which should help the problem
described in this bug report. This report is therefore being
closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information
on the solution and/or where to find the updated files,
please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report
if the solution does not work for you.

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2005-476.html