CVE-2010-0298

Published: 12 February 2010

The x86 emulator in KVM 83 does not use the Current Privilege Level (CPL) and I/O Privilege Level (IOPL) in determining the memory access available to CPL3 code, which allows guest OS users to cause a denial of service (guest OS crash) or gain privileges on the guest OS by leveraging access to a (1) IO port or (2) MMIO region, a related issue to CVE-2010-0306.

From the Ubuntu Security Team

It was discovered that KVM did not correctly limit certain privileged IO accesses on x86. Processes in the guest OS with access to IO regions could gain further privileges within the guest OS.

Notes

access to IO/MMIO requires elevated privileges, which already allows
for guest OS disruption.
No working upstream solution yet.

Status

References

• https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-947-1
• https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2010-0298
• NVD
• Launchpad
• Debian