Certain Arm Cortex and Neoverse processors through 2022-03-08 do not properly restrict cache speculation, aka Spectre-BHB

Overview

Certain Arm Cortex and Neoverse processors through 2022-03-08 do not properly restrict cache speculation, aka Spectre-BHB. An attacker can leverage the shared branch history in the Branch History Buffer (BHB) to influence mispredicted branches. Then, cache allocation can allow the attacker to obtain sensitive information.

Affected

• xen
• cortex-r7_firmware
• cortex-r8_firmware
• cortex-a57_firmware
• cortex-a65_firmware
• cortex-a65ae_firmware
• cortex-a710_firmware
• cortex-a72_firmware
• cortex-a73_firmware
• cortex-a75_firmware
• cortex-a76_firmware
• cortex-a76ae_firmware
• cortex-a77_firmware
• cortex-a78_firmware
• cortex-a78ae_firmware
• cortex-x1_firmware
• cortex-x2_firmware
• neoverse-e1_firmware
• neoverse-v1_firmware
• neoverse_n1_firmware
• neoverse_n2_firmware
• debian_linux = 9.0
• debian_linux = 10.0

Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.