CVE-2020-8694

Published: 10 November 2020

Insufficient access control in the Linux kernel driver for some Intel(R) Processors may allow an authenticated user to potentially enable information disclosure via local access.

From the Ubuntu security team

Moritz Lipp, Michael Schwarz, Andreas Kogler, David Oswald, Catherine Easdon, Claudio Canella, and Daniel Gruss discovered that the Intel Running Average Power Limit (RAPL) driver in the Linux kernel did not properly restrict access to power data. A local attacker could possibly use this to expose sensitive information.

Mitigation

Restrict permissions on the affected sysfs entries:
  $ sudo find /sys/devices/virtual/powercap/ -name energy_uj -exec chmod 400 {} \;

Priority

Medium

CVSS 3 base score: 5.6

Status

Notes

fix will be to adjust the access control bits on the RAPL
sysfs files.

References

• https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2020-8694
• https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/security-center/advisory/intel-sa-00389.html
• https://platypusattack.com/
• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SecurityTeam/KnowledgeBase/Platypus
• https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-4626-1
• https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-4627-1
• NVD
• Launchpad
• Debian

Bugs