Category Archives: Under our observation

AI and ML, Under our observation

Privilege Desynchronization: Cross-Privilege Spectre Attacks with Branch Privilege Injection (14-05-2025)

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Preface: Enhanced IBRS (eIBRS) and Automatic IBRS (AutoIBRS) are features designed to mitigate the Spectre V2 vulnerability, which affects speculative execution in CPUs.

Background: AutoIBRS is a similar feature introduced by AMD in their Zen 4 processors. It automatically manages IBRS mitigation resources across privilege level transitions, offering better performance compared to Retpoline. This feature is particularly beneficial for AMD’s Ryzen 7000 and EPYC 9004 series processors.

AMD EPYC 9004 series processors are designed for data centers and high-performance computing (HPC) environments. They offer features like up to 96 “Zen 4” cores, 12 channels of DDR5 memory, and PCIe Gen5 support.

Cyber security focus provided by ETH Zurich: Researchers from ETH Zurich have provided AMD with a paper titled “Privilege Desynchronization: Cross-Privilege Spectre Attacks with Branch Privilege Injection.”
AMD reviewed the paper and believes that this vulnerability does not impact AMD CPUs. 

If supported by the processor, operating systems enable eIBRS or AutoIBRS to mitigate cross-privilege BTI attacks. These mitigations need to keep track of the privilege domain of branch instructions to work correctly, which is non-trivial due to the highly complex and asynchronous nature of branch prediction. For example, previous work has shown that branch predictions are updated before branches retire, and in certain cases even before they are decoded. Our first challenge revolves around analyzing the behavior of restricted branch prediction under race conditions.

Official announcement: Researchers from ETH Zurich have provided AMD with a paper titled “Privilege Desynchronization: Cross-Privilege Spectre Attacks with Branch Privilege Injection.”
AMD reviewed the paper and believes that this vulnerability does not impact AMD CPUs. 

Please see the link for details – https://www.amd.com/en/resources/product-security/bulletin/amd-sb-7030.html

Potential Risk of CVE, Under our observation

CVE-2025-30217: SQL injection on Frappe web application framework (27th Mar 2025)

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Preface: The Frappe Framework comes equipped with a wide range of built-in tools and features that accelerate the development process. Developers can leverage ready-to-use modules, templates, and components to create applications quickly.

Background: Frappe Framework – A full-stack web application framework written in Python and Javascript. The framework provides a robust foundation for building web applications, including a database abstraction layer, user authentication and a REST API. Frappe UI: A Vue-based UI library to provide a modern user interface.

Remark: Frappe UI: A Vue-based UI library to provide a modern user interface. The Frappe UI library provides a variety of components that can be used to build single-page applications on top of the Frappe Framework.

Vulnerability details: SQL injection could be achieved via a specially crafted request, which could allow malicious person to gain access to sensitive information.

Ref: The Frappe web application framework can be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks if it constructs SQL commands using externally-influenced input from an upstream component without properly neutralizing special elements.

Official announcement: Please refer to the link for details – https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-30217

AI and ML, System, Under our observation

AMD urged software developers to implement best practices to avoid secret-dependent data accesses or control flows. (28-04-2024)

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Originally published on April 26, 2024.

Preface: (Level 3 cache) A memory bank built onto the motherboard or within the CPU module. The L3 cache feeds the L2 cache, and its memory is typically slower than the L2 memory, but faster than main memory.

Background: The last-level cache (LLC) is the last chance for memory accesses from the processor to avoid the costly latency of going to main memory. Level 3 (L3) represents the Last Level Cache (LLC) in the example above, and is the last (and slowest) stop within the cache hierarchy before the system must endure the long trek out to Main Memory.

The last-level cache (LLC) is one of the most dangerous shared resources since it is shared by all of the cores in a processor package, yet it allows fine-grained, high-bandwidth, low-noise cross-core attacks.

The cache memory divides into three levels:

L1 cache – fastest, but smallest, data and instructions

L2 cache – slower, but bigger, data-only

L3 cache – slowest, but biggest, data-only

Vulnerability detail: Cache side channel attacks work by monitoring security-critical operations such as AES T table entries or modular exponentiation or multiplication or memory accesses. The attacker is then able to derive the encryption key by recovering the key based on the accesses made (or not made) by the victim.

Official announcement: Please refer to the link for details –

https://www.amd.com/en/resources/product-security/bulletin/amd-sb-7019.html

Potential Risk of CVE, Science, Under our observation

To be new or it was former: Rowhammer Attacks on AMD Zen-Based Platforms. So called ZenHammer (25-03-2024)

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Preface: It is possible to trigger Rowhammer bit flips on DDR4 devices on AMD Zen 2 and Zen 3 systems despite deployed TRR mitigations, said researchers at ETH Zurich.

Background: When high-energy charged particles pass through the crystal lattice of a silicon wafer, their charges can interfere with the electrons within the lattice itself and provide energy. If the lattice is moved closer together within the wafer, this disturbed electron trajectory can create a temporary highly conductive path that did not exist before. The effect of this trace is similar to running a very thin wire across the wafer in random directions. If the particle’s path crosses a feature within the die, such as a floating MOSFET gate or an NMOS DRAM cell, the result may be a flipped bit.

Vulnerability details: On February 26, 2024, AMD received new research related to an industry-wide DRAM issue documented in “ZENHAMMER: Rowhammering Attacks on AMD Zen-based Platforms” from researchers at ETH Zurich. The research demonstrates performing Rowhammer attacks on DDR4 and DDR5 memory using AMD “Zen” platforms. Given the history around Rowhammer, the researchers do not consider these rowhammering attacks to be a new issue.

Mitigation: Please see the following official announcement for details – https://www.amd.com/en/resources/product-security/bulletin/amd-sb-7021.html

Potential Risk of CVE, Under our observation

CVE-2023-27997 Lack of detail, but can we find hints? (12th June 2023)

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Preface: If you need to push audio/video traffic over the tunnel DTLS can be a huge performance improvement.

Background: Preferred DTLS Tunnel
If enabled, FortiClient uses DTLS if it is enabled on the FortiGate and tunnel establishment is successful. If not enabled on the FortiGate or tunnel establishment does not succeed, TLS is used. DTLS tunnel uses UDP instead of TCP and can increase throughput over VPN.
When disabled, FortiClient uses TLS, even if DTLS is enabled on FortiGate.

Vulnerability details: Fortinet has released firmware updates their pre-authentication remote code execution vulnerability in SSL VPN devices.
The security fixes were released on Friday in FortiOS firmware versions 6.0.17, 6.2.15, 6.4.13, 7.0.12, and 7.2.5.

Details of the vulnerability displayed above: Please refer to the bleepingcomputer – https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/fortinet-fixes-critical-rce-flaw-in-fortigate-ssl-vpn-devices-patch-now/

My observation: Since no details provided by vendor. So, my assumptions can be find in attached diagram.

Potential Risk of CVE, System, Under our observation, Virus & Malware

About CVE-2023-29345 and CVE-2023-33143, Microsoft released Security Updated of the Chromium project (6th June 2023)

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Preface: Windows has traditionally run on machines that are powered by x86 / x64 processors. Windows 11 adds the capability to run unmodified x64 Windows apps on Arm devices! This capability to run x86 & x64 apps on Arm devices gives end-users confidence that the majority of their existing apps & tools will run well even on new Arm-powered devices. For the best of result, it can exploit Arm-native Windows apps theoretically, as a result, developers cope with trend , thus built or port Arm-native Windows apps.


Background: Codenamed “Anaheim”, on December 6, 2018, Microsoft announced its intent to base Edge on the Chromium source code, using the same browser engine as Google Chrome but with enhancements developed by Microsoft. The new Microsoft Edge (Chromium) is built on the same underlying technology as Google Chrome. During the Ignite 2021 conference, Microsoft revealed plans to align the codebase of the Edge browser on all supported platforms.


Vulnerability details:
CVE-2023-29345 Microsoft Edge Remote Code Execution – A vulnerability was found in Microsoft Edge (Web Browser) (version unknown).
CVE-2023-33143 – Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
For details, please refer to the link – https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-relnotes-security

System, Under our observation

Linux kernel BUG: About hugetlb[.]c in mm folder (22nd Mar 2023)

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Preface: Enabling HugePages makes it possible for the operating system to support memory pages greater than the default (usually 4 KB). Using very large page sizes can improve system performance by reducing the amount of system resources required to access page table entries.

Background: For Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems, it is recommend configure HugeTLB pages to guarantee that JBoss EAP processes will have access to large pages.
Reminder: Activating large pages for JBoss EAP JVMs results in pages that are locked in memory and cannot be swapped to disk like regular memory.

Ref: Hugetlb boot command line parameter semantics hugepagesz. Specify a huge page size. Used in conjunction with hugepages parameter to preallocate a number of huge pages of the specified size. Hence, hugepagesz and hugepages are typically specified in pairs such as: hugepagesz=2M hugepages=512.

Design weakness: The special hugetlb routine called at fork took care of structure updates at fork time. However, vma_splitting is not properly handled for ipc shared memory mappings backed by hugetlb pages. This can result in a “kernel NULL pointer dereference” BUG or use after free as two vmas point to the same lock structure.

Solution: Update the shm open and close routines to always call the underlying open and close routines.
For Redhat Linux, do the kernel update from 6.1.18-100.fc36 to 6.2.7-1000.fc36.

Technical reference: A subroutine IOBUFSET is provided to craved up an arbitrarily sized storage area into perforated buffer blocks with space for 132 data bytes. The beginning and ending addresses of the buffer storage area are specified to IOBUFSET in age A- and B-registers, respectively.

System, Under our observation

Have you upgraded your Linux kernel? (15th Mar 2023)

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Preface: Blue screen of death (BSOD) is error display on Windows commonly. In Linux, it is unlikely and uncommon, but is it possible?

Background: As the only copyright holder to the GPL-covered components of the software, you are free to add exceptions and additional terms to the GPLv3, as described in section 7 of that license. In fact, the LGPLv3 is just such a GPLv3 section 7 additional permission, allowing the component to be linked to proprietary code. But it is not recommended. Because it is extreme tricky.

The kernel marks itself as “tainted” when some event occurs that may be relevant when investigating the problem. Found that Kernel 6.1.16 was apparently subject to “oops”. What is “oops”? See below:
The tainted status is printed when a kernel internal problem (“kernel bug”), recoverable error (“kernel oops”), or unrecoverable error (“kernel panic”) occurs, and debug information about this is written to the log dmesg output. The tainted status can also be checked at runtime via files in /proc/.

Solution: Maybe it has nothing to do with serious cyberattacks. But it is recommended to upgrade the kernel . 6.2.5 and 6.1.18 has been updated

Potential Risk of CVE, Under our observation

CVE-2023-23931 – cryptography (7th Feb 2023)

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Preface: PyCrypto is no longer under active development (project is dead  – 2015). For details, see the link – https://github.com/pycrypto/pycrypto/issues/173
“cryptography” is a package which provides cryptographic recipes and primitives to Python developers. The goal is for it to be your “cryptographic standard library”. It supports Python 3.6+ and PyPy3 7.2+.

Background: “cryptography” is a package which provides cryptographic recipes and primitives to Python developers.
Unlike some OOP languages, Python is dynamically typed, which means that you don’t need to declare what kind of data (e.g. integer, array, etc) a variable can take before using it.
In computer science, a data buffer (or just buffer) is a region of a memory used to temporarily store data while it is being moved from one place to another.
Immutable buffers are allocated with an initial data content that may not be subsequently modified. This access model implies that all sharing of buffers is read-only.

Vulnerability details: cryptography is a package designed to expose cryptographic primitives and recipes to Python developers. In affected versions Cipher.update_into would accept Python objects which implement the buffer protocol, but provide only immutable buffers. This would allow immutable objects (such as bytes) to be mutated, thus violating fundamental rules of Python and resulting in corrupted output. This now correctly raises an exception. This issue has been present since update_into was originally introduced in cryptography 1.8.

My observation: According to CFFI technical manual, if require_writable is set to True, the function fails if the buffer obtained from python_buffer is read-only (e.g. if python_buffer is a byte string). The exact exception is raised by the object itself, and for things like bytes it varies with the Python version, so don’t rely on it. (Before version 1.12, the same effect can be achieved with a hack: call. Therefore it may need to take care of this cryptographic lib again when Python version update.

Official announcement: For details, see the link – https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-23931

2018, 2023, Potential Risk of CVE, Under our observation

Whether it is the last round of remediation on CVE-2022-26373? Intel’s Enhanced Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation (eIBRS) – 6th Feb 2023

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Preface: CVE-2022-26373 technical detail has released to public on 9th Aug 2022. Till end of Jan, 2023 it still has update on this vulnerability. For example, Red Hat fixed this vulnerability in their product Enterprise Linux 7 on 3rd Nov 2022. Since then it conducting the remediation to their product line. Perhaps the remediation on 24th Jan 2023 to Red Hat Virtualisation 4 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 is the final round.
Looks like this is a CPU vendor specific bug. As a result, some vendors have stated that their products are not affected by this vulnerability. Whether it a absolute answer? All will depends on the use of CPU processor brand.

Background: From technical point of view, Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation (IBRS) is an indirect branch control mechanism that restricts speculation of indirect branches. See below for technical details.
CPUID.(EAX=7H,ECX=0): If EDX[26] is 1, it means support IBRS and IBPB,
OS can write IA32_SPEC_CTRL0 and IA32_PRED_CMD0 to control the behavior of indirect branch predictor.
IBRS finally failed to enter the kernel due to function problems, however when when the vm is switched. It can get into kernel. This weakness found in 2018 earlier stage.

Vulnerability details: A flaw was found in hw. In certain processors with Intel’s Enhanced Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation (eIBRS) capabilities, soon after VM exit or IBPB command event, the linear address following the most recent near CALL instruction prior to a VM exit may be used as the Return Stack Buffer (RSB) prediction.
Non-transparent sharing of return predictor targets between contexts in some Intel(R) Processors may allow an authorized user to potentially enable information disclosure via local access.

Official announcement – For details, see URL – https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2022-26373