CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2018-10853 — A flaw was found in the way Linux kernel KVM hypervisor before 4.18 emulated instructions such as sgdt/sidt/fxsave/fxrstor

High CVSS 7.8

A flaw was found in the way Linux kernel KVM hypervisor before 4.18 emulated instructions such as sgdt/sidt/fxsave/fxrstor. It did not check current privilege(CPL) level while emulating unprivileged instructions. An unprivileged guest user/process could use this flaw to potentially escalate privileges inside guest.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.8 (3.0)
Published
2018-09-11
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
operating-system
Weaknesses
CWE-250, CWE-269

Affected products

  • canonical / ubuntu_linux / 16.04
  • canonical / ubuntu_linux / 18.04
  • debian / debian_linux / 8.0
  • linux / linux_kernel

Matched remediation archetype

Privilege escalation and unsafe privilege management

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Map service accounts, operating-system identities, roles, capabilities, impersonation, set-user transitions, and administrative helper paths.
  • Determine whether untrusted users or lower-privilege processes can reach the affected transition or modify inputs it trusts.
  • Review file, socket, registry, device, job, container, and cloud-role permissions used before and after privilege changes.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the supported fix and redesign privileged operations as a minimal, authenticated, allowlisted interface.
  • Drop privileges before processing untrusted input, verify the drop succeeds, and remove unnecessary roles, capabilities, and write permissions.
  • Validate ownership and permissions at time of use and add explicit lower-to-higher privilege boundary tests.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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