From time to time, we might release security bulletins related to Google Compute Engine. All security bulletins for Google Compute Engine are described here.
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Date published: 2019-05-14
last updated: 2019-05-17 T 17:00 PST
| Description | Severity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
DescriptionIntel has disclosed the following CVEs: These CVEs are collectively referred to as Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS). These vulnerabilities potentially allow data to be exposed via the interaction of speculative execution with microarchitectural state. Google Compute Engine impactThe host infrastructure that runs Compute Engine isolates customer workloads from each other. Unless you are running untrusted code inside your VMs, no further action is required. For customers running untrusted code in their own multi-tenant services within Compute Engine virtual machines, refer to your Guest OS Vendor's recommended mitigation, which might include using Intel's microcode mitigation features. We have deployed guest pass-through access to the new flush functionality. The following is a summary of mitigation steps available for common guest images. Patched images and vendor resourcesWe will provide links to patch information from each operating system vendor here as they become available, including status for each CVE. Use these images to recreate VM instances. Earlier versions of these public images do not contain these patches and do not mitigate potential attacks:
Container-Optimized OSIf you are using Container Optimized OS (COS) as your Guest OS and you are running untrusted, multi-tenant workloads in your virtual machine, we recommend that you:
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Medium |
Date published: 2018-08-14
last updated: 2018-08-20 T 17:00 PST
| Description | Severity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
DescriptionIntel has disclosed the following CVEs:
These CVEs are collectively referred to as "L1 Terminal Fault (L1TF)". These L1TF vulnerabilities exploit speculative execution by attacking the configuration of processor-level data structures. "L1" refers to the Level-1 Data cache (L1D), a small on-core resource used to accelerate memory access. Read the Google Cloud blog post for more details on these vulnerabilities and Compute Engine's mitigations. Google Compute Engine impactThe host infrastructure that runs Compute Engine and isolates customer workloads from each other is protected against known attacks. Compute Engine customers are encouraged to update their images to prevent the possibility of indirect exploitation within their guest environments. This is particularly important for customers running their own multi-tenant services on Compute Engine virtual machines. Google Compute Engine customers can update the guest operating systems on their instances using one of the following options:
Patched images and vendor resourcesWe will provide links to patch information from each operating system vendor here as they become available, including status for both CVEs. Use these images to recreate VM instances. Earlier versions of these public images do not contain these patches and do not mitigate potential attacks:
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High |
Date published: 2018-08-06
last updated: 2018-09-05 T 17:00 PST
| Description | Severity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
2018-09-05 UpdateCVE-2018-5391 was disclosed on 2018-08-14 by US-CERT. As with CVE-2018-5390, this is a kernel-level networking vulnerability that increases the effectiveness of denial of service (DoS) attacks against vulnerable systems. The main difference is that CVE-2018-5391 is exploitable over IP connections. We updated this bulletin to cover both vulnerabilities. DescriptionCVE-2018-5390 ("SegmentSmack") describes a kernel-level networking vulnerability that increases the effectiveness of denial of service (DoS) attacks against vulnerable systems over TCP connections. CVE-2018-5391 ("FragmentSmack") describes a kernel-level networking vulnerability that increases the effectiveness of denial of service (DoS) attacks against vulnerable systems over IP connections. Google Compute Engine impactThe host infrastructure that runs Compute Engine VMs is not at risk. The network infrastructure that handles traffic to and from Compute Engine VMs is protected against this vulnerability. Compute Engine VMs that only send/receive untrusted network traffic via HTTP(S), SSL, or TCP Load Balancers are protected against this vulnerability. Compute Engine VMs running unpatched operating systems that send/receive untrusted network traffic directly, or via Network Load Balancers, are vulnerable to this DoS attack. Consider updating your VM instances as soon as patches are available for their operating systems. Google Compute Engine customers can update the guest operating systems on their instances using one of the following options:
Patched images and vendor resourcesWe will provide links to patch information from each operating system vendor here as they become available.
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High |
Date published: 2018-01-03
last updated: 2018-05-21 T 15:00 PST
| Description | Severity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
2018-05-21 UpdateCVE-2018-3640 and CVE-2018-3639, Variants 3a and 4 respectively, were disclosed by Intel. As with the first three variants of Spectre and Meltdown, the infrastructure that runs Compute Engine VM instances is protected and customer VM instances are isolated and protected from one another. Additionally, Compute Engine plans to deploy Intel's microcode patches to our infrastructure, which will allow customers who run untrusted or multi-tenant workloads within a single VM instance to enable additional intra-VM mitigations when those mitigations are provided by operating system vendors and providers. Compute Engine will deploy the microcode patches once Intel has certified them and after Compute Engine has tested and qualified the patches for our production environment. We will provide more detailed timelines and updates on this page as they become available. DescriptionThese CVEs are variants of a new class of attack that exploit the speculative execution technology available in many processors. This class of attack can allow for unauthorized read-only access to memory data under various circumstances. Google Compute Engine used VM Live Migration technology to perform host system and hypervisor updates with no user impact, no forced maintenance windows, and no mass reboots required. However, all guest operating systems and versions must be patched to protect against this new class of attack regardless of where those systems run. Read the Project Zero blog post for complete technical details on this attack method. Read the Google Security blog post for complete details on Google's mitigations including all product-specific information. Google Compute Engine impactThe infrastructure that runs Compute Engine and isolates customer VM instances from each other is protected against known attacks. Our mitigations prevent unauthorized access to our host systems from applications running inside VM instances. These mitigations also prevent unauthorized access between VM instances running on the same host system. To prevent unauthorized access within your virtual machine instances, you must update the guest operating systems on those instances using one of the following options:
Patched images and vendor resourcesNote: Patched images might not include fixes for all of the CVEs listed in this security bulletin notice. Additionally, different images might include different methods for preventing these types of attacks. Check with your operating system vendor to confirm which CVEs they address in their patches and what prevention methods they use.
Use these images to recreate your VM instances. Earlier versions of these public images do not contain these patches and do not mitigate potential attacks. Patches from hardware vendorsNVIDIA provides patched drivers to mitigate potential attacks against systems that have NVIDIA® driver software installed. To learn which driver versions are patched, read the NVIDIA GPU Display Driver Security Updates security bulletin from NVIDIA. Revision history:
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High |
Date published: 2017-10-02
| Description | Severity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
DescriptionDnsmasq provides functionality for serving DNS, DHCP, router advertisements, and network boot. This software is commonly installed in systems as varied as desktop Linux distributions (like Ubuntu), home routers, and IoT devices. Dnsmasq is widely used both on the open Internet and internally in private networks. Google discovered seven distinct issues over the course of our regular internal security assessments. After we determined the severity of these issues, we worked to investigate their impact and exploitability and then produced internal proofs of concept for each of them. We also worked with the maintainer of Dnsmasq, Simon Kelly, to produce appropriate patches and mitigate the issue. During our review, the team found three potential remote code executions, one information leak, and three denial of service vulnerabilities affecting the latest version at the project git server as of September 5th 2017. These patches are upstreamed and are committed to the project’s Git repository. Google Compute Engine impactBy default, Dnsmasq is only installed in images that use NetworkManager and is inactive by default. The following Compute Engine public images have Dnsmasq installed:
However, other images might have Dnsmasq installed as a dependency for other packages. We recommend that you update your Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, RHEL, SLES, and OpenSuse instances to use the latest operating system image. CoreOS and Container-Optimized OS are not affected. Windows images are also unaffected. For instances running Debian and Ubuntu, you can perform an update by running the following commands in your instance: sudo apt-get -y update sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade For Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS instances, run: sudo yum -y upgrade For SLES and OpenSUSE images, run: sudo zypper up As an alternative to running the manual update commands, you can recreate VM instances using the image families of the respective operating system. |
High |
Date published: 2016-10-26
| Description | Severity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
DescriptionCVE-2016-5195 is a race condition in the way Linux kernel's memory subsystem handled breakage of the read only private mappings COW situation on write access. An unprivileged local user could use this flaw to gain write access to otherwise read only memory mappings and thus increase their privileges on the system. For more information see the Dirty COW FAQ. Google Compute Engine impactAll Linux distributions and versions on Compute Engine are affected. Most instances will automatically download and install a newer kernel. However, a reboot is required to patch your running system. New or re-created instances based on the following Google Compute Engine images have patched kernels installed already.
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High | CVE-2016-5195 |
Date published: 2016-02-16
Last updated: 2016-02-22
| Description | Severity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Description
CVE-2015-7547 is a vulnerability where the glibc DNS client side
resolver makes software vulnerable to a stack-based buffer
overflow when using the For more details, see the Google Online Security Blog or the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database. Google Compute Engine impactUpdate (2016-02-22): You can now recreate your instances using the following CoreOS, SLES, and OpenSUSE images:
Update (2016-02-17): You can now perform an update on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 15.10 instances by running the following commands:
As an alternative to running the manual update commands, you can now recreate their instances with the following new images:
We are not aware of any methods that can exploit this vulnerability through Compute Engine's DNS resolvers with the default glibc configuration. You should still patch your virtual machine instances as soon as possible, since, as with any new vulnerability, new exploit methods may be discovered over time. If you have enabled edns0 (disabled by default), you should disable it until your instances are patched. Original bulletin: Your Linux distribution might be vulnerable. Compute Engine customers will need to update the OS images of their instances to eliminate this vulnerability if they are running a Linux OS. For instances running Debian, you can perform an update by running the following commands in your instance:
We also recommend installing UnattendedUpgrades for your Debian instances. For Red Hat Enterprise Linux instances:
We will continue to update this bulletin as other operating system maintainers publish patches for this vulnerability and as Compute Engine releases updated OS images. |
High | CVE-2015-7547 |
Date published: 2015-03-19
| Description | Severity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
DescriptionCVE-2015-1427 is a vulnerability where the Groovy scripting engine in Elasticsearch before version 1.3.8 and any 1.4.x versions before 1.4.3, allows remote attackers to bypass the sandbox protection mechanism and execute arbitrary shell commands. For more details, see the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) or the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database. Google Compute Engine impactIf you are running Elasticsearch on your Compute Engine instances, you should upgrade your Elasticsearch version to 1.4.3 or higher. If you have already upgraded your Elasticsearch software, you are protected from this vulnerability. If you have not upgraded Elasticsearch 1.4.3 or higher, you can perform a rolling upgrade. If you deployed Elasticsearch using Click-to-deploy in the Google Cloud Platform Console, you can delete the deployment to remove instances running Elasticsearch. The Google Cloud Platform team is working on a fix in order to deploy an updated version of Elasticsearch. However, the fix is not yet available for the Click-to-deploy feature in the GCP Console. |
High | CVE-2015-1427 |
Date published: 2015-01-29
| Description | Severity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
DescriptionCVE-2015-0235 (Ghost) is a vulnerability in the glibc library. App Engine, Cloud Storage, BigQuery, and CloudSQL customers do not need to take any actions. Google’s servers have been updated and are protected from this vulnerability. Customers of Compute Engine may need to update their OS images. Google Compute Engine impactYour Linux distribution may be vulnerable. Compute Engine customers will need to update the OS images of their instances to eliminate this vulnerability if they are running Debian 7, Debian 7 backports, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3. This vulnerability does not affect Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 14.10, or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12. We recommend that you upgrade your Linux distributions. For instances running Debian 7, Debian 7 backports, or Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, you can perform an update by running the following commands in your instance:
For Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS instances:
For SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3 instances:
As an alternative to running the manual update commands above, users can now recreate their instances with the following new images:
Google Managed VM impactManaged VM users using |
High | CVE-2015-0235 |
Date published: 2014-10-15
Last updated: 2014-10-17
| Description | Severity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
DescriptionCVE-2014-3566 (aka POODLE) is a vulnerability in the design of SSL version 3.0. This vulnerability allows the plaintext of secure connections to be calculated by a network attacker. For details, see our blog post on the vulnerability. App Engine, Cloud Storage, BigQuery, and CloudSQL customers do not need to take any actions. Google’s servers have been updated and are protected from this vulnerability. Customers of Compute Engine need to update their OS images. Google Compute Engine impactUpdated (2014-10-17): You may be vulnerable if you are using SSLv3. Compute Engine customers will need to update the OS images of their instances to eliminate this vulnerability. We recommend that you upgrade your Linux distributions. For instances running Debian, you can perform an update by running the following commands in your instance: user@my-instance:~$ sudo apt-get update user@my-instance:~$ sudo apt-get -y upgrade user@my-instance:~$ sudo reboot For CentOS instances: user@my-instance:~$ sudo yum -y upgrade user@my-instance:~$ sudo reboot As an alternative to running the manual update commands above, users can now recreate their instances with the following new images to recreate your instances:
We will update the bulletin for RHEL and SLES images once we have the images. In the meantime, RHEL users can consult Red Hat directly for more information. Original bulletin: Compute Engine customers will need to update the OS images of their instances to eliminate this vulnerability. We will update this security bulletin with instructions once new OS images are available. |
Medium | CVE-2014-3566 |
Date published: 2014-09-24
last updated: 2014-09-29
| Description | Severity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
DescriptionThere is a bug in bash (CVE-2014-6271) that allows remote code execution based on parsing of any attacker-controlled environment variables. The most likely vector of exploitation is via malicious HTTP requests made to CGI scripts exposed on a web server. For more information, see the bug description. The bash bugs have been mitigated for Google Cloud Platform Products except for Compute Engine guest OS images dated before 20140926. Please see below for steps to mitigate the bugs for your Compute Engine images. Google Compute Engine impact
This bug may affect virtually all websites that use CGI scripts. In
addition, it will likely affect web sites that rely on PHP, Perl,
Python, SSI, Java, C++, and similar servlets that will ever invoke
shell commands via calls such as Update (2014-09-29): As an alternative to running the manual update commands below, users can now recreate their instances with images that mitigate additional vulnerabilities related to the bash security bug, including CVE-2014-7169, CVE-2014-6277, CVE-2014-6278, CVE-2014-7186, and CVE-2014-7187. Use the following new images to recreate your instances:
Update (2014-09-25): Users can now choose to recreate their instances instead of performing a manual update. To recreate your instances, use the following new images which contains fixes to this security bug:
For RHEL and SUSE images, you can also manually perform updates by running the following commands on your instances: # RHEL instances user@my-instance:~$ sudo yum -y upgrade # SUSE instances user@my-instance:~$ sudo zypper --non-interactive up Original bulletin: We recommend that you upgrade your Linux distributions. For instances running Debian, you can perform an update by running the following commands in your instance: user@my-instance:~$ sudo apt-get update user@my-instance:~$ sudo apt-get -y upgrade For CentOS instances: user@my-instance:~$ sudo yum -y upgrade For detailed information, review the announcement for the respective Linux distribution:
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High | CVE-2014-7169, CVE-2014-6271, CVE-2014-6277, CVE-2014-6278 CVE-2014-7186, CVE-2014-7187 |
Date published: 2014-07-25
| Description | Severity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
DescriptionElasticsearch Logstash is vulnerable to OS command injection that can allow unauthorized modification and disclosure of data. An attacker can send crafted events to any of Logstash’s data sources, allowing the attacker to execute commands with the permissions of the Logstash process. Google Compute Engine impactThis vulnerability affects all Compute Engine instances running versions of Elasticsearch Logstash before 1.4.2 with zabbix or nagios_nsca outputs enabled. To prevent attack, you can either:
Read more on the Logstash blog. Elasticsearch also recommends using a firewall to prevent remote access by untrusted IPs. |
High | CVE-2014-4326 |
Date published: 2014-06-18
| Description | Severity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
DescriptionWe would like to take a moment to respond to any possible concerns that customers have about the security of Docker containers when running on Google Cloud Platform. This includes customers using our Google App Engine extensions that support Docker Containers, container optimized virtual machines, or the Open Source Kubernetes scheduler. Docker has done a great job of responding to the issue and you can see their blog response here. Note that, as they say in their response, the issue revealed applies only to Docker 0.11, an older, pre-production, version. While the world is thinking about container security, we would like to point out that in Google Cloud Platform, Linux application container based solutions (specifically Docker containers) run in full virtual machines (Google Compute Engine). While we support the efforts of the Docker community to harden the Linux application container stack, we recognize that the technology is new, and the surface area large. It is our belief that, for now, full hypervisors (virtual machines) provide a more compact and defensible surface area. Virtual machines were designed from the beginning to isolate malicious workloads and to minimize the likelihood and impact of a code bug. Our customers can rest assured that a full hypervisor boundary exists between them and any third party, potentially malicious code. Should we reach a point where we consider the Linux application container stack robust enough to support multi-tenant workloads, we will let the community know. For now, the Linux application container does not replace the virtual machine. It is a way to get a lot more out of it. |
Low | Docker blog post |
Date published: 2014-06-05
Last updated: 2014-06-09
| Description | Severity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Description
OpenSSL has an issue where the This issue is identified as CVE-2014-0224. The OpenSSL team has fixed the issue and alerted the OpenSSL community to update OpenSSL. Google Compute Engine impactThis vulnerability affects all Compute Engine instances which use OpenSSL, including Debian, CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. You can update your instances by recreating them with new images, or by manually updating packages on your instances. Update (2014-06-09): To update your instances running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with new images, recreate your instances using the following image versions or higher:
Original post: To update Debian and CentOS instances using new images, recreate your instances using any of the following image versions or higher:
To manually update OpenSSL on your instances, run the following commands to update the appropriate packages. For instances running CentOS and RHEL, you can update OpenSSL by running these commands in your instance: user@my-instance:~$ sudo yum -y update user@my-instance:~$ sudo reboot For instances running Debian, you can update OpenSSL by running the following commands in your instance: user@my-instance:~$ sudo apt-get update user@my-instance:~$ sudo apt-get -y upgrade user@my-instance:~$ sudo reboot For instances running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, you can ensure OpenSSL is up to date by running these commands in the instance: user@my-instance:~$ sudo zypper --non-interactive up user@my-instance:~$ sudo reboot |
Medium | CVE-2014-0224 |
Date published: 2014-04-08
| Description | Severity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Description
The (1) TLS and (2) DTLS implementations in OpenSSL 1.0.1 before
1.0.1g do not properly handle Heartbeat Extension packets, which
allows remote attackers to obtain sensitive information from process
memory via crafted packets that trigger a buffer over-read, as
demonstrated by reading private keys, related to
Google Compute Engine impactThis vulnerability affects all Compute Engine Debian, RHEL, and CentOS instances that do not have the most updated version of OpenSSL. You can update your instances by recreating them with new images, or by manually updating packages on your instances. To update your instances using new images, recreate your instances using any of the following image versions or higher:
To manually update OpenSSL on your instances, run the following commands to update the appropriate packages. For instances running CentOS and RHEL, you can ensure OpenSSL is up to date by running these commands in the instance: user@my-instance:~$ sudo yum update user@my-instance:~$ sudo reboot For instances running Debian, you can update OpenSSL by running the following commands in your instance: user@my-instance:~$ sudo apt-get update user@my-instance:~$ sudo apt-get upgrade user@my-instance:~$ sudo reboot Instances running SUSE Linux are not affected. Update on April 14, 2014: In light of new research on extracting keys using the Heartbleed bug, Compute Engine is recommending that Compute Engine customers create new keys for any affected SSL services. |
Medium | CVE-2014-0160 |
Date published: 2013-06-07
| Description | Severity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
DescriptionNote: This vulnerability is only applicable for kernels, which have been deprecated and removed since API version v1.
Format string vulnerability in the Google Compute Engine impact
This vulnerability affects all Google Compute Engine kernels earlier than
To find out what kernel version your instance is using:
|
Medium | CVE-2013-2852 |
Date published: 2013-06-07
| Description | Severity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
DescriptionNote: This vulnerability is only applicable for kernels, which have been deprecated and removed since API version v1.
Format string vulnerability in the register_disk function in
Google Compute Engine Impact
This vulnerability affects all Google Compute Engine kernels earlier than
To find out what kernel version your instance is using:
|
Medium | CVE-2013-2851 |
Date published: 2013-05-14
| Description | Severity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
DescriptionNote: This vulnerability is only applicable for kernels, which have been deprecated and removed since API version v1.
The perf_swevent_init function in Google Compute Engine impact
This vulnerability affects all Google Compute Engine kernels earlier than
To find out what kernel version your instance is using:
|
High | CVE-2013-2094 |
Date published: 2013-02-18
| Description | Severity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
DescriptionNote: This vulnerability is only applicable for kernels, which have been deprecated and removed since API version v1.
Race condition in the ptrace functionality in the Linux kernel before
3.7.5 allows local users to gain privileges via a Google Compute Engine impact
This vulnerability affects Google Compute Engine kernels
To find out what kernel version your instance is using:
|
Medium | CVE-2013-0871 |
