CVE-2020-25595

Description

A flaw was found in Xen. Code paths in Xen's MSI handling have been identified which act on unsanitized values read back from device hardware registers. A guest that is not fully trusted may be able to crash Xen, leading to a denial of service (DoS) for the entire system. Privilege escalation and information leaks cannot be excluded. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to system availability.

Statement

Only guests with passed-through PCI devices may be able to leverage this vulnerability. Additionally, only x86 systems are vulnerable. ARM systems are not affected by this flaw.

This flaw has been rated as having a security impact of Moderate, and is not currently planned to be addressed in future updates of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is now in Extended Life Phase of the support and maintenance life cycle. For additional information, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle: https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/.

Mitigation

Avoid pass-through of physical devices to untrusted guests.

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Info alert:Important note

CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).

The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown

Red HatNVDcve.org
Base Score77.8N/A
Attack VectorLocalLocalN/A
Attack ComplexityHighLowN/A
Privileges RequiredLowLowN/A
User InteractionNoneNoneN/A
ScopeChangedUnchangedN/A
ConfidentialityLowHighN/A
Integrity ImpactLowHighN/A
Availability ImpactHighHighN/A

Vector

Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:H

NVD: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Understanding the Weakness (CWE)

Availability

Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart; DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory)

An attacker could provide unexpected values and cause a program crash or arbitrary control of resource allocation, leading to excessive consumption of resources such as memory and CPU.

Confidentiality

Technical Impact: Read Memory; Read Files or Directories

An attacker could read confidential data if they are able to control resource references.

Integrity,Confidentiality,Availability

Technical Impact: Modify Memory; Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands

An attacker could use malicious input to modify data or possibly alter control flow in unexpected ways, including arbitrary command execution.

Acknowledgements

Red Hat would like to thank the Xen project for reporting this issue.

Frequently Asked Questions

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