CVE-2012-6031

Published: 23 November 2012

The do_tmem_get function in the Transcendent Memory (TMEM) in Xen 4.0, 4.1, and 4.2 allow local guest OS users to cause a denial of service (CPU hang and host crash) via unspecified vectors related to a spinlock being held in the "bad_copy error path." NOTE: this issue was originally published as part of CVE-2012-3497, which was too general; CVE-2012-3497 has been SPLIT into this ID and others.

Notes

Xen team strongly recommends against TMEM use

only 4.0 and higher
ONLY installations where "tmem" is specified on the hypervisor command
line are vulnerable.  Most Xen installations do not do so.
upstream says: "TMEM has been described by its maintainers as a
technology preview, and is therefore not supported by them for
use in production systems. Pending a full security audit of the
code, the Xen.org security team recommends that Xen users do not
enable TMEM."
We will not be fixing this in Ubuntu. Marking as "ignored"

Status

References

• http://xforce.iss.net/xforce/xfdb/78268
• http://www.securitytracker.com/id?1027482
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/09/05/8
• http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Security_Announcements#XSA-15_multiple_TMEM_hypercall_vulnerabilities
• http://secunia.com/advisories/50472
• http://osvdb.org/85199
• http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-announce/2012-09/msg00006.html
• https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2012-6031
• NVD
• Launchpad
• Debian