CVE-2020-12288 Denial of service in Intel(R) Thunderbolt(TM) controllers

Medium 5.5 Published 9 Jun 2021 Updated 4 Aug 2024

An authenticated local user can cause a denial of service in Intel Thunderbolt controllers due to a protection mechanism failure.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Any signed-in user
Attackable: Local or same network only
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: None listed

What is CVE-2020-12288?

CVE-2020-12288 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Intel(R) Thunderbolt(TM) controllers, published on 9 Jun 2021. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

Protection mechanism failure in some Intel(R) Thunderbolt(TM) controllers may allow an authenticated user to potentially enable denial of service via local access.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-12288?

It affects 13 products.

Products include Intel Dsl5320 Thunderbolt 2 Firmware, Intel Dsl5520 Thunderbolt 2 Firmware, Intel Dsl6340 Thunderbolt 3 Firmware, Intel Dsl6540 Thunderbolt 3 Firmware, Intel Jhl6240 Thunderbolt 3 Firmware, Intel Jhl6340 Thunderbolt 3 Firmware and 7 more.

How do I fix CVE-2020-12288?

No fix has been published for CVE-2020-12288 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2020-12288 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-12288 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

Also known as GHSA-c2m2-5c82-2prj.