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CVE-2020-29484

Published: 15 December 2020

An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.14.x. When a Xenstore watch fires, the xenstore client that registered the watch will receive a Xenstore message containing the path of the modified Xenstore entry that triggered the watch, and the tag that was specified when registering the watch. Any communication with xenstored is done via Xenstore messages, consisting of a message header and the payload. The payload length is limited to 4096 bytes. Any request to xenstored resulting in a response with a payload longer than 4096 bytes will result in an error. When registering a watch, the payload length limit applies to the combined length of the watched path and the specified tag. Because watches for a specific path are also triggered for all nodes below that path, the payload of a watch event message can be longer than the payload needed to register the watch. A malicious guest that registers a watch using a very large tag (i.e., with a registration operation payload length close to the 4096 byte limit) can cause the generation of watch events with a payload length larger than 4096 bytes, by writing to Xenstore entries below the watched path. This will result in an error condition in xenstored. This error can result in a NULL pointer dereference, leading to a crash of xenstored. A malicious guest administrator can cause xenstored to crash, leading to a denial of service. Following a xenstored crash, domains may continue to run, but management operations will be impossible. Only C xenstored is affected, oxenstored is not affected.

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
xenial Needed

impish Ignored
(end of life)
jammy Not vulnerable
(4.11.4+57-g41a822c392-2)
kinetic Not vulnerable
(4.11.4+57-g41a822c392-2)
lunar Not vulnerable
(4.11.4+57-g41a822c392-2)
bionic Needed

focal Needed

groovy Ignored
(end of life)
hirsute Ignored
(end of life)
trusty Does not exist

upstream Needs triage

mantic Not vulnerable
(4.11.4+57-g41a822c392-2)
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