The security vulnerabilities known as Meltdown and Spectre involving speculative execution logic in a variety of Intel and non-Intel architectures also affects the Townsend Security product Alliance Key Manager through the SUSE Linux operating system. Exploitation of this vulnerability is primarily accomplished through user access to the server environment. Alliance Key Manager does not provide user access to the server. Therefore, the risk of exploitation of this vulnerability is considered low. However, Townsend Security is providing a software update to address this issue.

If you wish to apply this update please contact Townsend Security support. 

A customer service representative will provide you with information on installing the update.

As has been widely noted, you may experience some performance degradation related to the resolution of the Meltdown/Spectre software fix. This will not affect most Alliance Key Manager customers. However, if you process a large number of keys (thousands or more) you may wish to apply the patch to a failover server first and test the performance. Townsend Security will assist you with any performance proof-of-concept if needed.

Please be advised that customers using Alliance Key Manager in virtualized environments (cloud, VMware, etc.) also run some risk related to any hypervisor that is subject to this vulnerability. Please contact your cloud service provider or virtualization software provider for more information.