x86 shadow paging is deprecated

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Addressing certain issues, in particular related to operations which may take excessively long and therefore would need preemption, has turned out overly costly. Since alternatives HVM/PVH: HAP, PV: shim are commonly available, the decision was to deprecate the functionality,...

x86: Out-of-bounds read in vRTC emulation

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Accesses to the CMOS memory contents are done using an indirect IO port pair. Therefore Xen needs to cache the guest chosen index, and one of the usages of the index didn't take the necessary locking to avoid concurrent changes. As a result, a guest could change the index after ...

evtchn: Race between FIFO expand and reset

ISSUE DESCRIPTION The EVTCHNOPexpandarray hypercall checks for whether FIFO event channels are enabled, but without holding the correct lock. It can race with EVTCHNOPreset, resulting in dereferencing a NULL pointer. IMPACT A malicious HVM guest x86 HVM or PVH, and ARM can crash Xen leading to a...

vNUMA domain cleanup may race other operations

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Accessing the vNUMA configuration data of a guest is still possible when domain destruction has already started. The cleaning up of that configuration information is not synchronized with its retrieval by a device model controlling the guest. IMPACT While Denial of Service DoS...

PoD: Don't try to reclaim special pages

ISSUE DESCRIPTION A guest started with Populated on Demand enabled PoD can attempt to reclaim pages which aren't regular guest RAM. This can cause corruption of memory management state in Xen. IMPACT A buggy or malicious guest can cause corruption of Xen's state, leading to crashes or other...

pygrub is only supported in de-privileged mode

ISSUE DESCRIPTION XSA-443 and XSA-497 addressed specific issues in specific file system drivers libfsimage used by pygrub. Further issues were reported, and yet more are to be expected. XSA-443 introduced a means to run pygrub de-privileged. Only this mode of operation is security supported from...

sysctl and platform-op locks open to abuse

ISSUE DESCRIPTION To manage the system, sysctl and platform operations are used by the control domain or a possible Xenstore domain. Some of these operations may not be executed in parallel, so a system-wide lock each is used. The way those locks are acquired is, however, not providing any...

grant-table: type confusion in grant-copy

ISSUE DESCRIPTION When grant-copy operations are processed, the respective grant may or may not already be in use by another operation a mapping or another copy. For all copy operations the referenced guest frame is looked up. When another operation is already active for the grant the grant is...

Viridian STIMER division by zero

ISSUE DESCRIPTION The logic to handle periodic Viridian STIMERs performs a division with an unchecked user-controlled divisor value, that can be set to zero to cause a DE fault. IMPACT Enabling Viridian STIMERs to unprivileged HVM guests can result in a Denial of Service DoS affecting the entire...

grant-table: version change racing with other operations

ISSUE DESCRIPTION With the introduction of Grant Table v2 came the requirement to be able to switch between versions. Switching from v1 to v2 reduces the number of valid grant references, as a bigger shared entry structure is then needed while the shared table doesn't change size. Switching from ...

vIRQ event channel binding may break Xenstore

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Xenstore, to have an up-to-date picture of the entire system, wants to know of domains appearing and disappearing. To make this more robust, a new XENDOMCTLgetdomainstate was introduced. The management of the bitmap underlying that operation is tied into the binding of the...

correct buffer checks for DM_OP hypercalls

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Parts of the DMOP handling code assumes the caller has provided the required number of buffers for the given operation without any checking being done. As a result, certain operations might access stack rubble as structures are possibly uninitialized. IMPACT A device model of a...

buffer overruns in libfsimage iso9660 handling

ISSUE DESCRIPTION The directory and Rock Ridge / SUSP walk in libfsimage's iso9660 driver derives several lengths directly from attacker-controlled on-disk fields without validating them: The directory loop itself assumes a good record length. This is CVE-2026-42494. The calculation of the System...

XAPI: Missing TLS verification in some SDKs

ISSUE DESCRIPTION XAPI provides SDKs; bindings for the API in various programming languages. These are artefacts from a build of XAPI, intended for integration into 3rd party products. In all SDKs, there is a main RPC connection to the XAPI host. TLS for this connection is verified properly, or...

x86 HVM I/O port list traversal

ISSUE DESCRIPTION HVM guest I/O port accesses are subject to either emulation or at least translation. Translations are managed by the device model via XENDOMCTLioportmapping, and hence the linked list used may changed at any time. Traversal of those lists while handling guest I/O port accesses...

x86: mismatched mapcache metadata

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Some shadow paging errors paths will switch the page-tables without updating the currently running vCPU reference. This causes a mismatch between the loaded page-tables and the mapcache metadata which can lead to corruption of the mapcache. IMPACT Privilege escalation, Denial of...

Arm: Completion of memory accesses not guaranteed by completion of a TLBI

ISSUE DESCRIPTION A hardware issue has been identified in certain Arm CPU designs. A broadcast TLBI on one PE may complete before affected memory accesses on another PE are globally observed. This may permit bypass of Stage 1 translation, Stage 2 translation, or GPT protection. The erratum occurs...

domctl lock open to abuse

ISSUE DESCRIPTION To create and manage guests, domctl operations are used by the control domain, a possible Xenstore domain, or by a domain controlling a particular guest. Some of these operations may not be executed in parallel, so a system-wide lock is used. The way that lock is acquired is,...

x86: CPU Opcode Cache corruption

ISSUE DESCRIPTION AMD have disclosed a potential vulnerability in certain CPUs which can cause instructions to execute at a higher privilege. For more information, see: https://www.amd.com/en/resources/product-security/bulletin/amd-sb-7052.html IMPACT Code of any privilege could escalate to a...

Multiple RBAC issues in XAPI

ISSUE DESCRIPTION XAPI can configure different users with different roles, using Role Based Access Control. For more details, see: https://docs.xenserver.com/en-us/xencenter/current-release/rbac-overview.htmlrbac-roles The pool-admin role is fully privileged. Notably, users with this role can als...

Linux kernel double free in Xen privcmd driver

ISSUE DESCRIPTION The Linux kernel's privcmd driver can be abused to circumvent kernel lockdown secure boot by causing a double free of kernel memory. Note that this operation can be performed by root only, so any further impact on the system like denial of service is not security relevant. IMPAC...

grant table v2 race in status page mapping

ISSUE DESCRIPTION The adjustments made for XSA-379 as well as those subsequently becoming XSA-387 still left a race window, when a HVM or PVH guest does a grant table version change from v2 to v1 in parallel with mapping the status pages via XENMEMaddtophysmap. Some of the status pages may then b...

Xenstored DoS via XS_RESET_WATCHES command

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Any guest can cause xenstored to crash by issuing a XSRESETWATCHES command within a transaction due to an assert triggering. In case xenstored was built with NDEBUG defined nothing bad will happen, as assert is doing nothing in this case. Note that the default is not to define...

oxenstored keeps quota related use counts across domain destruction

ISSUE DESCRIPTION When oxenstored is tearing a domain down, the node data is cleaned up but the usage counts are leaked. When the domain ID is eventually reused, the new domain can create fewer nodes before beeing deemed to be over quota. IMPACT Over an extended period of time, new domains will b...

Linux kernel out of bounds read via Xen-related sysfs file

ISSUE DESCRIPTION The Linux sysfs file /sys/hypervisor/properties/buildid does not contain printable information, but a binary value of typically 16 or 20 bytes, which is not terminated by a zero byte. The kernel driver making this information available is using the sprintf function for writing t...

x86: Floating Point Divider State Sampling

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Researchers from the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security have discovered Floating Point Divider State Sampling. It is detailed in a paper titled "TREVEX: A Black-Box Detection Framework For Data-Flow Transient Execution Vulnerabilities" For more information, see:...

Linux privcmd driver can circumvent kernel lockdown

ISSUE DESCRIPTION The Linux kernel's privcmd driver can be abused to circumvent kernel lockdown secure boot, e.g. by modifying page tables to enable user mode to modify kernel memory. IMPACT An administrator of an unprivileged guest booted in secure mode is able to perform actions on the kernel...

Use after free of paging structures in EPT

ISSUE DESCRIPTION The Intel EPT paging code uses an optimization to defer flushing of any cached EPT state until the p2m lock is dropped, so that multiple modifications done under the same locked region only issue a single flush. Freeing of paging structures however is not deferred until the...

Xenstored DoS by unprivileged domain

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Any guest issuing a Xenstore command accessing a node using the illegal node path "/local/domain/", will crash xenstored due to a clobbered error indicator in xenstored when verifying the node path. Note that the crash is forced via a failing assert statement in xenstored. In ca...

x86: incomplete IBPB for vCPU isolation

ISSUE DESCRIPTION In the context switch logic Xen attempts to skip an IBPB in the case of a vCPU returning to a CPU on which it was the previous vCPU to run. While safe for Xen's isolation between vCPUs, this prevents the guest kernel correctly isolating between tasks. Consider: 1 vCPU runs on CP...

x86: buffer overrun with shadow paging + tracing

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Shadow mode tracing code uses a set of per-CPU variables to avoid cumbersome parameter passing. Some of these variables are written to with guest controlled data, of guest controllable size. That size can be larger than the variable, and bounding of the writes was missing. IMPAC...

varstored: TOCTOU issues with mapped guest memory

ISSUE DESCRIPTION varstored is a component of the Xapi toolstack handling UEFI Variables for a VM. It has a communication path with OVMF inside the VM involving mapping a buffer prepared by OVMF. Within varstored, there were insufficient compiler barriers, creating TOCTOU issues with data in the...

Incorrect removal of permissions on PCI device unplug

ISSUE DESCRIPTION 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...

x86: Incorrect input sanitisation in Viridian hypercalls

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Some Viridian hypercalls can specify a mask of vCPU IDs as an input, in one of three formats. Xen has boundary checking bugs with all three formats, which can cause out-of-bounds reads and writes while processing the inputs. CVE-2025-58147. Hypercalls using the HVVPSET Sparse...

XAPI UTF-8 string handling

ISSUE DESCRIPTION There are multiple issues. 1. Updates to the XAPI database sanitise input strings, but try generating the notification using the unsanitised input. This causes the database's event thread to terminate and cease further processing. 2. XAPI's UTF-8 encoder implements v3.0 of the...

Arm issues with page refcounting

ISSUE DESCRIPTION There are two issues related to the mapping of pages belonging to other domains: For one, an assertion is wrong there, where the case actually needs handling. A NULL pointer de-reference could result on a release build. This is CVE-2025-58144. And then the P2M lock isn't held...

Mutiple vulnerabilities in the Viridian interface

ISSUE DESCRIPTION There are multiple issues related to the handling and accessing of guest memory pages in the viridian code: 1. A NULL pointer dereference in the updating of the reference TSC area. This is CVE-2025-27466. 2. A NULL pointer dereference by assuming the SIM page is mapped when a...

x86: Transitive Scheduler Attacks

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Researchers from Microsoft and ETH Zurich have discovered several new speculative sidechannel attacks which bypass current protections. They are detailed in a paper titled "Enter, Exit, Page Fault, Leak: Testing Isolation Boundaries for Microarchitectural Leaks". Two issues, whi...

x86: Incorrect stubs exception handling for flags recovery

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Certain instructions need intercepting and emulating by Xen. In some cases Xen emulates the instruction by replaying it, using an executable stub. Some instructions may raise an exception, which is supposed to be handled gracefully. Certain replayed instructions have additional...

WinPVDrivers: Excessive permissions on user-exposed devices

ISSUE DESCRIPTION The Windows PV drivers expose various facilities to userspace. Several of these have no security descriptor, and are therefore fully accessible to unprivileged users. These are: 1. XenCons, CVE-2025-27462 2. XenIface, CVE-2025-27463 3. XenBus, CVE-2025-27464 IMPACT Unprivileged...

x86: Indirect Target Selection

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Researchers at VU Amsterdam have released Training Solo, detailing several speculative attacks which bypass current protections. One issue, which Intel have named Indirect Target Selection, is a bug in the hardware support for prediction-domain isolation. The mitigation for this...

deadlock potential with VT-d and legacy PCI device pass-through

ISSUE DESCRIPTION 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. IMPACT Th...

Backend can crash Linux netfront

ISSUE DESCRIPTION After a suspend/resume cycle of a Linux guest e.g. via "virsh dompmsuspend"/ "virsh dompmwakeup" a malicious network backend can crash the guest via a NULL-pointer dereference in the guest's xen-netfront driver. During the resume operation the xen-netfront driver will release so...

Xen hypercall page unsafe against speculative attacks

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Xen guests need to use different processor instructions to make explicit calls into the Xen hypervisor depending on guest type and/or CPU vendor. In order to hide those differences, the hypervisor can fill a hypercall page with the needed instruction sequences, allowing the gues...

Deadlock in x86 HVM standard VGA handling

ISSUE DESCRIPTION The hypervisor contains code to accelerate VGA memory accesses for HVM guests, when the virtual VGA is in "standard" mode. Locking involved there has an unusual discipline, leaving a lock acquired past the return from the function that acquired it. This behavior results in a...

libxl leaks data to PVH guests via ACPI tables

ISSUE DESCRIPTION PVH guests have their ACPI tables constructed by the toolstack. The construction involves building the tables in local memory, which are then copied into guest memory. While actually used parts of the local memory are filled in correctly, excess space that is being allocated is...

x86: Deadlock in vlapic_error()

ISSUE DESCRIPTION In x86's APIC Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller architecture, error conditions are reported in a status register. Furthermore, the OS can opt to receive an interrupt when a new error occurs. It is possible to configure the error interrupt with an illegal vector, which...

PCI device pass-through with shared resources

ISSUE DESCRIPTION When multiple devices share resources and one of them is to be passed through to a guest, security of the entire system and of respective guests individually cannot really be guaranteed without knowing internals of any of the involved guests. Therefore such a configuration canno...

error handling in x86 IOMMU identity mapping

ISSUE DESCRIPTION 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...

Xapi: Metadata injection attack against backup/restore functionality

ISSUE DESCRIPTION For a brief summary of Xapi terminology, see: https://xapi-project.github.io/xen-api/overview.htmlobject-model-overview Xapi contains functionality to backup and restore metadata about Virtual Machines and Storage Repositories SRs. The metadata itself is stored in a Virtual Disk...