Information About Foreshadow, the Intel L1 Terminal Fault Vulnerability

On August 14, 2018, Intel released information about a newly identified vulnerability in their processors. Intel calls it the L1 Terminal Fault or L1TF, and it concerns a speculative execution side-channel method. The vulnerability was discovered by two independent groups of researchers who have called it Foreshadow.

We have begun our mitigation efforts, with a goal to mitigate without interruption to any running systems, and without needing to coordinate directly with most customers. We hope to achieve full mitigation in the coming weeks on a rolling schedule, and as vendor patches are made available.

If a reboot is required to achieve full mitigation, we send out emergency notices before doing so to all affected customers so they can plan accordingly.

While that protects our side of things, customers are advised to ensure they have kept their operating systems and kernels up to date in order to receive any relevant patches as they are released.

Vulnerabilities like this, including AMD’s Spectre/Meltdown, are why, as a standard best practice, we employ a diverse, multi-architecture deployment in our global platform. If you would like to talk with a Solution Specialist about diversifying your infrastructure, please contact us at 1.800.419.2656.