When passing through PCI devices, the detach logic in libxl won't remove
access permissions to any 64bit memory BARs the device might have. As a
result a domain can still have access any 64bit memory BAR when such
device is no longer assigned to the domain.
For PV domains the permission leak allows the domain itself to map the memory
in the page-tables. For HVM it would require a compromised device model or
stubdomain to map the leaked memory into the HVM domain p2m.
CVSS Score
7.5
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2025-10-31
When setting up interrupt remapping for legacy PCI(-X) devices,
including PCI(-X) bridges, a lookup of the upstream bridge is required.
This lookup, itself involving acquiring of a lock, is done in a context
where acquiring that lock is unsafe. This can lead to a deadlock.
CVSS Score
7.5
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2025-07-17
Certain PCI devices in a system might be assigned Reserved Memory
Regions (specified via Reserved Memory Region Reporting, "RMRR") for
Intel VT-d or Unity Mapping ranges for AMD-Vi. These are typically used
for platform tasks such as legacy USB emulation.
Since the precise purpose of these regions is unknown, once a device
associated with such a region is active, the mappings of these regions
need to remain continuouly accessible by the device. In the logic
establishing these mappings, error handling was flawed, resulting in
such mappings to potentially remain in place when they should have been
removed again. Respective guests would then gain access to memory
regions which they aren't supposed to have access to.
CVSS Score
7.5
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2024-09-25
Unlike 32-bit PV guests, HVM guests may switch freely between 64-bit and
other modes. This in particular means that they may set registers used
to pass 32-bit-mode hypercall arguments to values outside of the range
32-bit code would be able to set them to.
When processing of hypercalls takes a considerable amount of time,
the hypervisor may choose to invoke a hypercall continuation. Doing so
involves putting (perhaps updated) hypercall arguments in respective
registers. For guests not running in 64-bit mode this further involves
a certain amount of translation of the values.
Unfortunately internal sanity checking of these translated values
assumes high halves of registers to always be clear when invoking a
hypercall. When this is found not to be the case, it triggers a
consistency check in the hypervisor and causes a crash.
CVSS Score
6.5
EPSS Score
0.021
Published
2024-05-16
Because of a logical error in XSA-407 (Branch Type Confusion), the
mitigation is not applied properly when it is intended to be used.
XSA-434 (Speculative Return Stack Overflow) uses the same
infrastructure, so is equally impacted.
For more details, see:
https://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-407.html
https://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-434.html
CVSS Score
7.5
EPSS Score
0.031
Published
2024-05-16
PCI devices can make use of a functionality called phantom functions,
that when enabled allows the device to generate requests using the IDs
of functions that are otherwise unpopulated. This allows a device to
extend the number of outstanding requests.
Such phantom functions need an IOMMU context setup, but failure to
setup the context is not fatal when the device is assigned. Not
failing device assignment when such failure happens can lead to the
primary device being assigned to a guest, while some of the phantom
functions are assigned to a different domain.
CVSS Score
5.3
EPSS Score
0.003
Published
2024-03-20
The current setup of the quarantine page tables assumes that the
quarantine domain (dom_io) has been initialized with an address width
of DEFAULT_DOMAIN_ADDRESS_WIDTH (48) and hence 4 page table levels.
However dom_io being a PV domain gets the AMD-Vi IOMMU page tables
levels based on the maximum (hot pluggable) RAM address, and hence on
systems with no RAM above the 512GB mark only 3 page-table levels are
configured in the IOMMU.
On systems without RAM above the 512GB boundary
amd_iommu_quarantine_init() will setup page tables for the scratch
page with 4 levels, while the IOMMU will be configured to use 3 levels
only, resulting in the last page table directory (PDE) effectively
becoming a page table entry (PTE), and hence a device in quarantine
mode gaining write access to the page destined to be a PDE.
Due to this page table level mismatch, the sink page the device gets
read/write access to is no longer cleared between device assignment,
possibly leading to data leaks.
CVSS Score
5.5
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2024-01-05
The fixes for XSA-422 (Branch Type Confusion) and XSA-434 (Speculative
Return Stack Overflow) are not IRQ-safe. It was believed that the
mitigations always operated in contexts with IRQs disabled.
However, the original XSA-254 fix for Meltdown (XPTI) deliberately left
interrupts enabled on two entry paths; one unconditionally, and one
conditionally on whether XPTI was active.
As BTC/SRSO and Meltdown affect different CPU vendors, the mitigations
are not active together by default. Therefore, there is a race
condition whereby a malicious PV guest can bypass BTC/SRSO protections
and launch a BTC/SRSO attack against Xen.
CVSS Score
4.7
EPSS Score
0.0
Published
2024-01-05
Arm provides multiple helpers to clean & invalidate the cache
for a given region. This is, for instance, used when allocating
guest memory to ensure any writes (such as the ones during scrubbing)
have reached memory before handing over the page to a guest.
Unfortunately, the arithmetics in the helpers can overflow and would
then result to skip the cache cleaning/invalidation. Therefore there
is no guarantee when all the writes will reach the memory.
This undefined behavior was meant to be addressed by XSA-437, but the
approach was not sufficient.
CVSS Score
3.3
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2024-01-05
Arm provides multiple helpers to clean & invalidate the cache
for a given region. This is, for instance, used when allocating
guest memory to ensure any writes (such as the ones during scrubbing)
have reached memory before handing over the page to a guest.
Unfortunately, the arithmetics in the helpers can overflow and would
then result to skip the cache cleaning/invalidation. Therefore there
is no guarantee when all the writes will reach the memory.
CVSS Score
3.3
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2024-01-05
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