Bug 1851471 (CVE-2020-15563)

Summary: CVE-2020-15563 xen: inverted code paths in x86 dirty VRAM tracking leads to DoS (XSA-319)
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: Dhananjay Arunesh <darunesh>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Red Hat Product Security <security-response-team>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: acaringi, ailan, bhu, bmasney, brdeoliv, dhoward, drjones, dvlasenk, fhrbata, hkrzesin, imammedo, jforbes, jshortt, jstancek, knoel, m.a.young, mrezanin, nmurray, pbonzini, ptalbert, robinlee.sysu, rvrbovsk, security-response-team, vkuznets, xen-maint
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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An invalid pointer dereference flaw was found in Xen. A malicious or buggy HVM guest may cause the hypervisor to crash, resulting in Denial of Service (DoS) affecting the entire host.
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2020-07-07 19:29:54 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On: 1854463    
Bug Blocks: 1851487    

Description Dhananjay Arunesh 2020-06-26 16:22:57 UTC
A vulnerability was found in xen, where a malicious or buggy HVM guest may cause the hypervisor to crash, resulting in Denial of Service (DoS) affecting the entire host.

Comment 1 Mauro Matteo Cascella 2020-07-01 15:47:16 UTC
Acknowledgments:

Name: the Xen project

Comment 3 Mauro Matteo Cascella 2020-07-06 14:02:11 UTC
Statement:

Xen versions 4.7 and earlier are not affected by this flaw. Arm systems are not affected, only x86 HVM guests using shadow paging can leverage the vulnerability. In addition there needs to be an entity actively monitoring a guest's video frame buffer (typically for display purposes) in order for such a guest to be able to leverage the vulnerability. x86 PV guests as well as x86 HVM guest using hardware assisted paging (HAP) cannot leverage the vulnerability.

Comment 4 Mauro Matteo Cascella 2020-07-06 14:02:13 UTC
Mitigation:

For HVM guest explicitly configured to use shadow paging (e.g. via the `hap=0` xl domain configuration file parameter), changing to HAP (e.g. by setting `hap=1`) will avoid exposing the vulnerability to those guests. HAP is the default (in upstream Xen), where the hardware supports it; so this mitigation is only applicable if HAP has been disabled by configuration.

Comment 5 Mauro Matteo Cascella 2020-07-07 13:59:27 UTC
External References:

https://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-319.html

Comment 6 Mauro Matteo Cascella 2020-07-07 14:02:07 UTC
Created xen tracking bugs for this issue:

Affects: fedora-all [bug 1854463]

Comment 7 Product Security DevOps Team 2020-07-07 19:29:54 UTC
This bug is now closed. Further updates for individual products will be reflected on the CVE page(s):

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2020-15563