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CVE-2020-25602

Published: 23 September 2020

An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.14.x. An x86 PV guest can trigger a host OS crash when handling guest access to MSR_MISC_ENABLE. When a guest accesses certain Model Specific Registers, Xen first reads the value from hardware to use as the basis for auditing the guest access. For the MISC_ENABLE MSR, which is an Intel specific MSR, this MSR read is performed without error handling for a #GP fault, which is the consequence of trying to read this MSR on non-Intel hardware. A buggy or malicious PV guest administrator can crash Xen, resulting in a host Denial of Service. Only x86 systems are vulnerable. ARM systems are not vulnerable. Only Xen versions 4.11 and onwards are vulnerable. 4.10 and earlier are not vulnerable. Only x86 systems that do not implement the MISC_ENABLE MSR (0x1a0) are vulnerable. AMD and Hygon systems do not implement this MSR and are vulnerable. Intel systems do implement this MSR and are not vulnerable. Other manufacturers have not been checked. Only x86 PV guests can exploit the vulnerability. x86 HVM/PVH guests cannot exploit the vulnerability.

Notes

AuthorNote
mdeslaur
hypervisor packages are in universe. For
issues in the hypervisor, add appropriate
tags to each section, ex:
Tags_xen: universe-binary

Priority

Medium

Cvss 3 Severity Score

6.0

Score breakdown

Status

Package Release Status
xen
Launchpad, Ubuntu, Debian
upstream Needs triage

bionic Not vulnerable
(code not present)
groovy Ignored
(end of life)
focal
Released (4.11.3+24-g14b62ab3e5-1ubuntu2.3)
hirsute Ignored
(end of life)
impish Ignored
(end of life)
jammy Not vulnerable
(4.11.4+37-g3263f257ca-1)
kinetic Not vulnerable
(4.11.4+37-g3263f257ca-1)
trusty Does not exist

xenial Not vulnerable
(code not present)
Binaries built from this source package are in Universe and so are supported by the community.

Severity score breakdown

Parameter Value
Base score 6.0
Attack vector Local
Attack complexity Low
Privileges required High
User interaction None
Scope Changed
Confidentiality None
Integrity impact None
Availability impact High
Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H