Some Intel Skylake CPU models (SKL-H/S/Xeon E3 v5, family 6, model 94,

stepping 3) have reports of possible system hangs when revision 0xdc

of microcode, that is included in microcode-20200609 update to address

CVE-2020-0543, CVE-2020-0548, and CVE-2020-0549, is applied[1].  In order

to address this, microcode update to the newer revision has been disabled

by default on these systems, and the previously published microcode revision

0xd6 is used by default for the OS-driven microcode update.

[1] https://github.com/intel/Intel-Linux-Processor-Microcode-Data-Files/issues/31#issuecomment-644885826

For the reference, SHA1 checksums of 06-5e-03 microcode files containing

microcode revisions in question are listed below:

 * 06-5e-03, revision 0xd6: 86c60ee7d5d0d7115a4962c1c61ceecb0fd3a95a

 * 06-5e-03, revision 0xdc: 5e1020a10678cfc60980131c3d3a2cfd462b4dd7

 * 06-5e-03, revision 0xe2: 031e6e148b590d1c9cfdb6677539eeb4899e831c

Please contact your system vendor for a BIOS/firmware update that contains

the latest microcode version.  For the information regarding microcode versions

required for mitigating specific side-channel cache attacks, please refer

to the following knowledge base articles:

 * CVE-2017-5715 ("Spectre"):

   https://access.redhat.com/articles/3436091

 * CVE-2018-3639 ("Speculative Store Bypass"):

   https://access.redhat.com/articles/3540901

 * CVE-2018-3620, CVE-2018-3646 ("L1 Terminal Fault Attack"):

   https://access.redhat.com/articles/3562741

 * CVE-2018-12130, CVE-2018-12126, CVE-2018-12127, and CVE-2019-11091

   ("Microarchitectural Data Sampling"):

   https://access.redhat.com/articles/4138151

 * CVE-2019-0117 (Intel SGX Information Leak),

   CVE-2019-0123 (Intel SGX Privilege Escalation),

   CVE-2019-11135 (TSX Asynchronous Abort),

   CVE-2019-11139 (Voltage Setting Modulation):

   https://access.redhat.com/solutions/2019-microcode-nov

 * CVE-2020-0543 (Special Register Buffer Data Sampling),

   CVE-2020-0548 (Vector Register Data Sampling),

   CVE-2020-0549 (L1D Cache Eviction Sampling):

   https://access.redhat.com/solutions/5142751

The information regarding enforcing microcode update is provided below.

To enforce usage of the latest 06-5e-03 microcode revision for a specific kernel

version, please create a file "force-intel-06-5e-03" inside

/lib/firmware/<kernel_version> directory, run

"/usr/libexec/microcode_ctl/update_ucode" to add it to firmware directory

where microcode will be available for late microcode update, and run

"dracut -f --kver <kernel_version>", so initramfs for this kernel version

is regenerated and the microcode can be loaded early, for example:

    touch /lib/firmware/3.10.0-862.9.1/force-intel-06-5e-03

    /usr/libexec/microcode_ctl/update_ucode

    dracut -f --kver 3.10.0-862.9.1

After that, it is possible to perform a late microcode update by executing

"/usr/libexec/microcode_ctl/reload_microcode" or by writing value "1" to

"/sys/devices/system/cpu/microcode/reload" directly.

To enforce addition of this microcode for all kernels, please create file

"/etc/microcode_ctl/ucode_with_caveats/force-intel-06-5e-03", run

"/usr/libexec/microcode_ctl/update_ucode" for enabling late microcode updates,

and "dracut -f --regenerate-all" for enabling early microcode updates:

    mkdir -p /etc/microcode_ctl/ucode_with_caveats

    touch /etc/microcode_ctl/ucode_with_caveats/force-intel-06-5e-03

    /usr/libexec/microcode_ctl/update_ucode

    dracut -f --regenerate-all

Please refer to /usr/share/doc/microcode_ctl/README.caveats for additional

information.