USN-4182-3: Intel Microcode regression

Releases

• Ubuntu 19.10
• Ubuntu 19.04
• Ubuntu 18.04 ESM
• Ubuntu 16.04 ESM

Packages

• intel-microcode - Processor microcode for Intel CPUs

Details

USN-4182-1 provided updated Intel Processor Microcode. A regression
was discovered that caused some Skylake processors to hang after
a warm reboot. This update reverts the microcode for that specific
processor family.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Original advisory details:

Stephan van Schaik, Alyssa Milburn, Sebastian Österlund, Pietro Frigo,
Kaveh Razavi, Herbert Bos, Cristiano Giuffrida, Giorgi Maisuradze, Moritz
Lipp, Michael Schwarz, Daniel Gruss, and Jo Van Bulck discovered that Intel
processors using Transactional Synchronization Extensions (TSX) could
expose memory contents previously stored in microarchitectural buffers to a
malicious process that is executing on the same CPU core. A local attacker
could use this to expose sensitive information. (CVE-2019-11135)

It was discovered that certain Intel Xeon processors did not properly
restrict access to a voltage modulation interface. A local privileged
attacker could use this to cause a denial of service (system crash).
(CVE-2019-11139)

Update instructions

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu 19.10

• intel-microcode - 3.20191115.1ubuntu0.19.10.2

Ubuntu 19.04

• intel-microcode - 3.20191115.1ubuntu0.19.04.2

Ubuntu 18.04

• intel-microcode - 3.20191115.1ubuntu0.18.04.2

Ubuntu 16.04

• intel-microcode - 3.20191115.1ubuntu0.16.04.2

After a standard system update you need to reboot your computer.

References

• https://launchpad.net/bugs/1854764