Intel emits patch to squash chip bug that lets any guest VM crash host servers

Intel on Tuesday issued an out-of-band security update to address a privilege escalation vulnerability in recent server and personal computer chips. The flaw, designated INTEL-SA-00950 and given a CVSS 3.0 score of 8.8 out of 10, affects Intel Sapphire Rapids, Alder Lake, and Raptor Lake chip families. It's being addressed with a microcode update as part of Intel's Patch Tuesday bundle of 31 security advisories that cover 104 CVEs. The top line summary: this vulnerability can be exploited by guest virtual machines to crash the underlying hypervisor host. If that's a problem for you, pay attention to the following. "Intel discovered this issue internally and was already preparing the ecosystem to release a mitigation through our well-documented Intel Platform Update process," the company said in a statement provided to The Register. "At the request of customers, including OEMs and CSPs, this process typically includes a validation, integration, and deployment window after Intel deems the patch meets production quality, and helps ensure that mitigations are available to all customers on all supported Intel platforms when the issue is publicly disclosed. While Intel is not aware of any active attacks using this vulnerability, affected platforms have an available mitigation via a microcode update." According to a post by Jerry Bryant, senior director of incident response and security communications at Intel, the chip biz's own researchers found the vulnerability, dubbed "Redundan...