Spectre/Meltdown impact on network devices

Sun Jan 7 19:02:24 UTC 2018

Hello,

I'm curious to hear the impact on network devices of this new hardware
flaws that everybody talk about. Yes, the Meltdown/Spectre flaws.

I know that some Arista devices seem to use AMD chips and some say that
they might be immune to one of these vulnerability. Still, it's possible
to spawn a bash shell in these and one with limited privileges could
maybe find some BGP/Ospf/SNMP passwords. Maybe it's also possible to
leak a full config.

I understand that one need access but still it could be possible for one
to social engineer a NOC user, hijack the account with limited access
and maybe run the "exploit".

I know it's a lot of "if" and "maybe", but still I'm curious what is the
status of big networking systems? Are they vulnerable?

Thanks

Jean