topic Re: Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerability in Advanced Threat Prevention Discussions

Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerability

Justin.Abendroth — Thu, 04 Jan 2018 17:01:25 GMT

Are PA devices effected by the meltdown and spectre vulnerability and if so, are these signatures known yet by PA?

Re: Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerability

bvandivier — Thu, 04 Jan 2018 22:31:02 GMT

Please note we have posted the following advisories regarding Meltdown and Spectre.

https://researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com/2018/01/threat-brief-meltdown-spectre-vulnerabilities/

https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/Customer-Advisories/Information-about-Meltdown-and-Spectre-findings/ta-p/193878/jump-to/first-unread-message

Please also note that these are vulnerabilities which require local code execution therefore coverage in the form of IPS (vulnerability protection) signatures are not germane to these particular vulnerabilities as these are not network-borne attacks.

Re: Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerability

skannappan — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 00:32:47 GMT

Hi,

Is the vulnerability applicable only to the hardware platform or if the Virtual firewall series are also affected?

Re: Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerability

Ronelle — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 11:29:15 GMT

The new 762 update sent out last night was applied to our PA500 and "broke" it.

We had lots of resources-unavailable session end reasons.

We had to revert and restart the dataplane.

Has anyone else had these issues?

-Ronelle

Re: Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerability

ChuckKimber — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 16:21:43 GMT

@bvandivier wrote:

Please also note that these are vulnerabilities which require local code execution therefore coverage in the form of IPS (vulnerability protection) signatures are not germane to these particular vulnerabilities as these are not network-borne attacks.

I believe PA's response is accurate for packet level devices, but what about products like an On-Premise Wildfire sandbox. I assume Wildfire is some form of a hypervisor product that is intentionally executing files on intentionally flawed OSes. Is this not "local code execution"? Are there any specific statements for the Wildfire product?

Re: Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerability

bvandivier — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 16:31:10 GMT

Any specific statements regarding Wildfire or other products as they relate to meltdown/spectre will be shared in future updates to the official advisory.

https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/Customer-Advisories/Information-about-Meltdown-and-Spectre-findings/ta-p/193878/jump-to/first-unread-message

https://researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com/2018/01/threat-brief-meltdown-spectre-vulnerabilities/

Re: Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerability

justamoment — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 17:51:49 GMT

@Ronelle wrote:
The new 762 update sent out last night was applied to our PA500 and "broke" it.
We had lots of resources-unavailable session end reasons.

We had to revert and restart the dataplane.

Has anyone else had these issues?

-Ronelle

We have 5 with no issues (well 4 - 1 is an A/P pair).

Re: Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerability

LawrenceLiang — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 22:09:56 GMT

Singature just released: "Name: Multiple CPUs Side-Channel Information Disclosure Vulnerability, Unique Threat ID: 30276"

Re: Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerability

Scott_Holland — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 19:02:06 GMT

Is there a test site where we can see what the endpoints will look like when the palo triggers a drop?

Re: Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerability

chyates — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 21:16:46 GMT

default action = alert. surprising.

Re: Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerability

djr — Wed, 24 Jan 2018 08:54:11 GMT

Default Palo Action on any new threat = Alert

...as far as I can tell. I have always presumed it is deliberate, but I don't know how long they leave it before they feel confident enough to block. We have spotted some very mature Critical or High threats which are still only "alert" as default action.

Re: Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerability

OtakarKlier — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 23:35:38 GMT

Hello,

The defaults are set to alert as a safety measure. WHat we do is copy the default Vulnerability policies and manuall set the action based on severity. I.e. anything medium and higher is blocked or reset, etc. This way when new signatures come out, they may be classified as high or critical, but our policies are set so that they will be blocked in some fashion.

Hope that makes sense.

Regards,

Re: Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerability

chyates — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 00:16:18 GMT

So you override the default actions for those severities? I have that configuration in place in some places, but the way the default actions as described to my be an SE from Palo Alto which got me thinking about that approach. He said something to the effect that default action is evaluated very differently than severity. They are basically set based on confidence that there will be no false positives.

Another example he gave was the Poodle signature which simply detected any SSLv3 - which you certainly wouldn't want to block, particularly at that time. Granted that was an informational signature, not medium or higher, but you can look at Vulnerability Protection signatures '( severity contains 'critical' ) and ( action contains 'alert' )' and see 1704 signatures (over 1/10th) where the default action is alert (and one that is allow.)

Do you even alert below medium? All I have investigated in those severities have ended up on our whitelist so far.

Re: Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerability

djr — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 09:17:23 GMT

We do drop/reset Critical and High because we have seen serious vulnerabilities being ignored because they are alert only, but we had worked out that the PAN approach was more based on confidence. That makes lots of sense, but only if the action changes after a few days or so when they have worked out how reliable the detection is. We have found that they stay on alert for months which just gives too large a window for attack.

We do alert everything but our logs are huge! It's a good point maybe we don't need to, we just tend to log as much as possible so we can see what is going on.

Re: Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerability

OtakarKlier — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 21:00:01 GMT

Hello @chyates,

Yes, I am actually thinking of just performing a server side reset on my external facing zones so my servers connection gets reset but the attackers does not so it keeps their session open :).

Cheers!

Re: Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerability

Lohit06 — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 11:15:21 GMT

How are IPS signatures possible for these attacks. Can anyone tell me what is the detection criteria ?

Re: Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerability

bvandivier — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 16:38:25 GMT

While we do not disclose the specific logic our IPS signatures utilize due to the fact that this is considered proprietary information, I can say that our IPS signatures are used to detect instances wherein someone has weaponized a Meltdown or Spectre attack using malicious javascript or something similar.