An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.13.x, allowing Intel guest OS users to gain privileges or cause a denial of service because of non-atomic modification of a live EPT PTE. When mapping guest EPT (nested paging) tables, Xen would in some circumstances use a series of non-atomic bitfield writes. Depending on the compiler version and optimisation flags, Xen might expose a dangerous partially written PTE to the hardware, which an attacker might be able to race to exploit. A guest administrator or perhaps even an unprivileged guest user might be able to cause denial of service, data corruption, or privilege escalation. Only systems using Intel CPUs are vulnerable. Systems using AMD CPUs, and Arm systems, are not vulnerable. Only systems using nested paging (hap, aka nested paging, aka in this case Intel EPT) are vulnerable. Only HVM and PVH guests can exploit the vulnerability. The presence and scope of the vulnerability depends on the precise optimisations performed by the compiler used to build Xen. If the compiler generates (a) a single 64-bit write, or (b) a series of read-modify-write operations in the same order as the source code, the hypervisor is not vulnerable. For example, in one test build using GCC 8.3 with normal settings, the compiler generated multiple (unlocked) read-modify-write operations in source-code order, which did not constitute a vulnerability. We have not been able to survey compilers; consequently we cannot say which compiler(s) might produce vulnerable code (with which code-generation options). The source code clearly violates the C rules, and thus should be considered vulnerable.
CVSS Score
7.8
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2020-07-07
An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.13.x, allowing x86 HVM guest OS users to cause a hypervisor crash. An inverted conditional in x86 HVM guests' dirty video RAM tracking code allows such guests to make Xen de-reference a pointer guaranteed to point at unmapped space. A malicious or buggy HVM guest may cause the hypervisor to crash, resulting in Denial of Service (DoS) affecting the entire host. Xen versions from 4.8 onwards are affected. Xen versions 4.7 and earlier are not affected. Only x86 systems are affected. Arm systems are not affected. Only x86 HVM guests using shadow paging can leverage the vulnerability. In addition, there needs to be an entity actively monitoring a guest's video frame buffer (typically for display purposes) in order for such a guest to be able to leverage the vulnerability. x86 PV guests, as well as x86 HVM guests using hardware assisted paging (HAP), cannot leverage the vulnerability.
CVSS Score
6.5
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2020-07-07
In Xen 4.10, new infrastructure was introduced as part of an overhaul to how MSR emulation happens for guests. Unfortunately, one tracking structure isn't freed when a vcpu is destroyed. This allows guest OS administrators to cause a denial of service (host OS memory consumption) by rebooting many times.
CVSS Score
6.5
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2018-01-05
Heap-based buffer overflow in the pcnet_receive function in hw/net/pcnet.c in QEMU allows guest OS administrators to cause a denial of service (instance crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code via a series of packets in loopback mode.
CVSS Score
8.8
EPSS Score
0.008
Published
2017-10-16
The xen_biovec_phys_mergeable function in drivers/xen/biomerge.c in Xen might allow local OS guest users to corrupt block device data streams and consequently obtain sensitive memory information, cause a denial of service, or gain host OS privileges by leveraging incorrect block IO merge-ability calculation.
CVSS Score
8.8
EPSS Score
0.003
Published
2017-08-24
Xen allows local OS guest users to cause a denial of service (crash) or possibly obtain sensitive information or gain privileges via vectors involving transitive grants.
CVSS Score
8.8
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2017-08-24
arch/x86/mm.c in Xen allows local PV guest OS users to gain host OS privileges via vectors related to map_grant_ref.
CVSS Score
8.8
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2017-08-24
The pygrub boot loader emulator in Xen, when S-expression output format is requested, allows local pygrub-using guest OS administrators to read or delete arbitrary files on the host via string quotes and S-expressions in the bootloader configuration file.
CVSS Score
7.9
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2017-01-23
The pygrub boot loader emulator in Xen, when nul-delimited output format is requested, allows local pygrub-using guest OS administrators to read or delete arbitrary files on the host via NUL bytes in the bootloader configuration file.
CVSS Score
7.5
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2017-01-23
Xen, when running on a 64-bit hypervisor, allows local x86 guest OS users to modify arbitrary memory and consequently obtain sensitive information, cause a denial of service (host crash), or execute arbitrary code on the host by leveraging broken emulation of bit test instructions.
CVSS Score
8.8
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2017-01-23