On January 3, 2018, researchers disclosed security vulnerabilities known commonly in the industry as Spectre ^[4] and Meltdown ^[5], and which have been assigned the following CVEs:

These vulnerabilities take advantage of implementations for the speculative execution of instructions on most (if not all) modern processors and Operating Systems (OSs), including those supported by A10 products. They could allow an unprivileged attacker, in specific circumstances, to read privileged memory belonging to other processes or memory allocated to the Operating System (OS) kernel. To successfully exploit these weaknesses and gain access to restricted memory, an attack requires the execution of crafted, custom code on the target device or system.

ACOS products that support the External Health Monitor feature are potentially exposed to misuse of the feature by malicious, Read-Write privileged administrators. Accordingly, A10 recommends limiting access to such critical infrastructure networking equipment to only trusted administrators from trusted administrative networks and hosts as a defense against active exploit of these vulnerabilities and to ensure that only code fully-trusted by the customer is deployed to these products.

A10 products and release families that support this ACOS feature and warrant these administrative considerations include:

A10 aGalaxy and other ACOS products do not support this feature and are accordingly unaffected by these vulnerabilities. These products include:

For all virtualized A10 products, including ACOS vThunder, A10 recommends that customers ensure that their Host-OSs (hypervisors) are updated as necessary to address these vulnerabilities and that their underlying platforms have corresponding, appropriate firmware updates.

In addition, for A10 Lightning ADC and Harmony Controller virtualized products, root-level access to the Local OS shell and Container Management System (CMS) software is available to product administrators. A10 recommends that only trusted administrators likewise be allowed access to these root-level, privileged services to ensure that malicious code which could exploit these vulnerabilities does not enter or become established in virtual instances of these products.

For A10 Harmony Controller Appliance and Hybrid Virtual Appliance products, root-level access to the Host OS shell is also available to product administrators. A10 additionally recommends that only trusted administrators likewise be allowed access to this service to ensure that potentially malicious code from untrusted parties does not become instantiated in these appliances.

To improve the ability of customers to manage ACOS devices, in light of these issues and others like them in the future, A10 will harden and enhance ACOS configuration and management capabilities for this feature as described in the Affected Releases section below.

A10 continues to investigate the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities for further potential impacts and will update this advisory as additional information becomes available. As this investigation proceeds, A10 PSIRT looks forward to feedback and questions on these issues. Customers and partners are welcome to contact the A10 Technical Assistance Center (TAC) or their A10 Sales Representatives. Others are invited to contact A10 PSIRT via email.