CVE-2020-10768 — A flaw was found in the Linux Kernel before 5

A flaw was found in the Linux Kernel before 5.8-rc1 in the prctl() function, where it can be used to enable indirect branch speculation after it has been disabled. This call incorrectly reports it as being 'force disabled' when it is not and opens the system to Spectre

01What is this vulnerability?

A flaw was found in the Linux Kernel before 5.8-rc1 in the prctl() function, where it can be used to enable indirect branch speculation after it has been disabled. This call incorrectly reports it as being 'force disabled' when it is not and opens the system to Spectre v2 attacks. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to confidentiality.

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
Linux Kernel	kernel	before 5.8-rc1

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2020-09-15T23:13:30.000Z
• Last modified: 2024-08-04T11:14:15.299Z

09References

• git.kernel.org — https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4d…
• bugzilla.redhat.com — https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2020-10768