x86: PKRU and BND* leakage between vCPU-s

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Memory Protection Extensions MPX and Protection Key PKU are features in newer processors, whose state is intended to be per-thread and context switched along with all other XSAVE state. Xen's vCPU context switch code would save and restore the state only if the guest had set the...

xenstore denial of service via repeated update

ISSUE DESCRIPTION xenstored supports transactions, such that if writes which would invalidate assumptions of a transaction occur, the entire transaction fails. Typical response on a failed transaction is to simply retry the transaction until it succeeds. Unprivileged domains may issue writes to...

x86: Disallow L3 recursive pagetable for 32-bit PV guests

ISSUE DESCRIPTION On real hardware, a 32-bit PAE guest must leave the USER and RW bit clear in L3 pagetable entries, but the pagetable walk behaves as if they were set. The L3 entries are cached in processor registers, and don't actually form part of the pagewalk. When running a 32-bit PV guest o...

IOMMU TLB flushing may be inadvertently suppressed

ISSUE DESCRIPTION An internal flag is used to temporarily suppress IOMMU TLB flushes, in order to consolidate multiple single page flushes into one wider flush. This flag is not cleared again, on certain error paths. This can result in TLB flushes not happening when they are needed. Retaining sta...

Another race in XENMAPSPACE_grant_table handling

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Guests are permitted access to certain Xen-owned pages of memory. The majority of such pages remain allocated / associated with a guest for its entire lifetime. Grant table v2 status pages, however, are de-allocated when a guest switches back from v2 to v1. Freeing such pages...

memory leak when destroying guest without PT devices

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Certain internal state is set up, during domain construction, in preparation for possible pass-through device assignment. On ARM and AMD V-i hardware this setup includes memory allocation. On guest teardown, cleanup was erroneously only performed when the guest actually had a...

PHYSDEVOP_{prepare,release}_msix exposed to unprivileged guests

ISSUE DESCRIPTION The PHYSDEVOPprepare,releasemsix operations are supposed to be available to privileged guests domain 0 in non-disaggregated setups only, but the necessary privilege check was missing. IMPACT Malicious or misbehaving unprivileged guests can cause the host or other guests to...

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...

x86: unintended memory sharing between guests

ISSUE DESCRIPTION On Intel systems that support the "virtualize APIC accesses" feature, a guest can read and write the global shared xAPIC page by moving the local APIC out of xAPIC mode. Access to this shared page bypasses the expected isolation that should exist between two guests. IMPACT Guest...

Xenstore: Guests can cause Xenstore to not free temporary memory

ISSUE DESCRIPTION When working on a request of a guest, xenstored might need to allocate quite large amounts of memory temporarily. This memory is freed only after the request has been finished completely. A request is regarded to be finished only after the guest has read the response message of...

A PV guest could DoS Xen while unmapping a grant

ISSUE DESCRIPTION To address XSA-380, reference counting was introduced for grant mappings for the case where a PV guest would have the IOMMU enabled. PV guests can request two forms of mappings. When both are in use for any individual mapping, unmapping of such a mapping can be requested in two...

Xenstore: Guests can get access to Xenstore nodes of deleted domains

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Access rights of Xenstore nodes are per domid. When a domain is gone, there might be Xenstore nodes left with access rights containing the domid of the removed domain. This is normally no problem, as those access right entries will be corrected when such a node is written later...

Xenstore: Guests can create orphaned Xenstore nodes

ISSUE DESCRIPTION By creating multiple nodes inside a transaction resulting in an error, a malicious guest can create orphaned nodes in the Xenstore data base, as the cleanup after the error will not remove all nodes already created. When the transaction is committed after this situation, nodes...

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...

arm: memory corruption when freeing p2m pages

ISSUE DESCRIPTION When freeing pages used for stage-2 page tables, the freeing routine failed to remove these pages from an internally managed list they were put on during allocation. The same list node elements are also used by the hypervisor's page allocator. Subsequent manipulation of ARM's...

x86: insufficient reference counts during shadow emulation

ISSUE DESCRIPTION When using shadow paging, writes to guest pagetables must be trapped and emulated, so the shadows can be suitably adjusted as well. When emulating the write, Xen maps the guests pagetables to make the final adjustment and leave the guest's view of its state consistent. However,...

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...

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...

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...

double unlock in x86 guest IRQ handling

ISSUE DESCRIPTION An optional feature of PCI MSI called "Multiple Message" allows a device to use multiple consecutive interrupt vectors. Unlike for MSI-X, the setting up of these consecutive vectors needs to happen all in one go. In this handling an error path could be taken in different...

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...

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...

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...

Xenstore: Guests can crash xenstored via exhausting the stack

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Xenstored is using recursion for some Xenstore operations e.g. for deleting a sub-tree of Xenstore nodes. With sufficiently deep nesting levels this can result in stack exhaustion on xenstored, leading to a crash of xenstored. IMPACT A malicious guest creating very deep nesting...

ioreq handling possibly susceptible to multiple read issue

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Single memory accesses in source code can be translated to multiple ones in machine code by the compiler, requiring special caution when accessing shared memory. Such precaution was missing from the hypervisor code inspecting the state of I/O requests sent to the device model fo...

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: 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...

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...

unexpected pitfall in xenaccess API

ISSUE DESCRIPTION A test/example program, for exercising the Xen memaccess API, does not take all necessary precautions against hostile guest behaviour. As a result, software developers using it as an example or template might have written and deployed vulnerable code. See the patch for technical...

frontends vulnerable to backends

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Xen offers the ability to run PV backends in regular unprivileged guests, typically referred to as "driver domains". Running PV backends in driver domains has one primary security advantage: if a driver domain gets compromised, it doesn't have the privileges to take over the...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

WITHDRAWN: missing XSETBV intercept privilege check on AMD SVM

ISSUE DESCRIPTION NOTE: This advisory has been withdrawn XSETBV is a privileged instruction, i.e. should result in GP when issued by code running at other than the most privileged level CPL 0. Unlike other privileged and intercepted instructions in AMD SVM, XSETBV has the privilege level check do...

Memory mapping failure DoS vulnerability

ISSUE DESCRIPTION When setp2mentry fails, Xen's internal data structures the p2m and m2p tables can get out of sync. This failure can be triggered by unusual guest behaviour exhausting the memory reserved for the p2m table. If it happens, subsequent guest-invoked memory operations can cause Xen t...

Xen DoS using IOMMU faults from PCI-passthrough guest

ISSUE DESCRIPTION A VM that controls a PCIE device directly can cause it to issue DMA requests to invalid addresses. Although these requests are denied by the IOMMU, the hypervisor needs to handle the interrupt and clear the error from the IOMMU, and this can be used to live-lock a CPU and...

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...

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...

Disaggregated domain management security status

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Xen supports disaggregation of various support and management functions into their own domains; this is often done for security and robustness reasons. In Xen 4.3 additional functionality was introduced to allow further disaggregation: the Xen Security Modules mechanism was...

Xen domain builder Out-of-memory due to malicious kernel/ramdisk

ISSUE DESCRIPTION The Xen PV domain builder contained no validation of the size of the supplied kernel or ramdisk either before or after decompression. This could cause the toolstack to consume all available RAM in the domain running the domain builder. CVE-2012-4544 Additionally, under similar...

multiple TMEM hypercall vulnerabilities

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Several sub-operations of the Transcendent Memory TMEM hypercall either do not correctly validate their inputs, do not correctly validate the privilege of the calling guest, or have other security-relevant bugs. A full list of the vulnerabilities in the TMEM system is not...

Xen <= 3.3 DoS due to incorrect virtual address validation

ISSUE DESCRIPTION The x8664 addrok macro intends to ensure that the checked address is either in the positive half of the 48-bit virtual address space, or above the Xen-reserved area. However, the current shift count is off-by-one, allowing full access to the "negative half" too, via certain...

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...

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,...

Grant table hypercall infinite loop DoS vulnerability

ISSUE DESCRIPTION Due to inappropriate duplicate use of the same loop control variable, passing bad arguments to GNTTABOPgetstatusframes can cause an infinite loop in the compat hypercall handler. IMPACT A malicious guest administrator can trigger the bug. If the Xen watchdog is enabled, the whol...

pirq range check DoS vulnerability

ISSUE DESCRIPTION domainpirqtoemuirq uses the guest provided pirq value before range checking it, and physdevunmappirq uses domainpirqtoemuirq without checking the pirq value either. Invalid pirq values can cause Xen to read out of array bounds, usually resulting in a fatal page fault. IMPACT A...

paravirtualised kernel image validation

ISSUE DESCRIPTION 1. Problems ----------- The functions which interpret the kernel image supplied for a paravirtualised guest, and decompress it into memory when booting the domain, are incautious. Specifically: i Integer overflow in the decompression loop memory allocator might result in...

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...