[Ksplice][Ubuntu-18.10-Updates] New Ksplice updates for Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic (4.18.0-18.19)

[Oracle Ksplice]

Synopsis: 4.18.0-18.19 can now be patched using Ksplice
CVEs: CVE-2017-5715

Systems running Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic can now use Ksplice to patch
against the latest Ubuntu kernel update, 4.18.0-18.19.

INSTALLING THE UPDATES

We recommend that all users of Ksplice Uptrack running Ubuntu 18.10
Cosmic install these updates.

On systems that have "autoinstall = yes" in /etc/uptrack/uptrack.conf,
these updates will be installed automatically and you do not need to
take any action.

Alternatively, you can install these updates by running:

# /usr/sbin/uptrack-upgrade -y


DESCRIPTION

* Denial-of-service in FSCache object lookup.

A race condition between looking up and dropping an object from an FSCache
instance can lead to a kernel hang. A local user could use this flaw to cause a
denial-of-service.


* Improved fix for CVE-2017-5715: Information leak due to missing IBPB calls in SVM.

A potential Spectre v2 attack vector exists in the KVM code that
supports SVM-enabled processors, due to a failure to call
indirect_branch_prediction_barrier when freeing vcpus.  This can be
exploited by a local attacker to leak information about the running
system.


* NULL pointer dereference in AMD IOMMU ACPI device matching.

A missing NULL pointer dereference could result in a kernel crash when
attempting to matching IDs for an ACPI device.


* Note: Ksplice will not add the STIBP support for CVE-2017-5715.

Ksplice will not add support for the Intel STIBP feature which provides
Spectre hardening for user-space processes.  Administrators wishing to
provide protection between user-space processes may disable
hyperthreading with:

  echo off > /sys/devices/system/cpu/smt/control

SUPPORT

Ksplice support is available at ksplice-support_ww at oracle.com.