CVE-2020-10768

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2020-09-16 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-440

Description

A flaw was found in the Linux Kernel before 5.8-rc1 in the prctl() function, where it can be used to enable indirect branch speculation after it has been disabled. This call incorrectly reports it as being 'force disabled' when it is not and opens the system to Spectre v2 attacks. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to confidentiality.

Affected products

Linux kernel: before 5.8.0 — fixed in 5.8.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.8.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2020-10768
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4d8df8cbb9156b0a0ab3f802b80cb5db57acc0bf
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2020-10768
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4d8df8cbb9156b0a0ab3f802b80cb5db57acc0bf

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