Bug 1271971 (CVE-2015-7835, xsa148) - CVE-2015-7835 xen: Uncontrolled creation of large page mappings by PV guests on x86
Summary: CVE-2015-7835 xen: Uncontrolled creation of large page mappings by PV guests ...
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: CVE-2015-7835, xsa148
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
high
high
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Red Hat Product Security
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On: 1276344
Blocks: 1271637
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2015-10-15 08:07 UTC by Adam Mariš
Modified: 2021-02-17 04:50 UTC (History)
10 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2018-03-07 09:52:40 UTC
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)
xen-unstable, Xen 4.6.x (1.63 KB, patch)
2015-10-15 08:09 UTC, Adam Mariš
no flags Details | Diff
Xen 4.5.x (1.62 KB, patch)
2015-10-15 08:10 UTC, Adam Mariš
no flags Details | Diff
Xen 4.4.x, Xen 4.3.x (1.53 KB, patch)
2015-10-15 08:10 UTC, Adam Mariš
no flags Details | Diff

Description Adam Mariš 2015-10-15 08:07:05 UTC
A vulnerability in xen allowing malicious PV guest administrators to escalate privilege, so as to control the whole system, was found.

The code to validate level 2 page table entries is bypassed when certain conditions are satisfied. This means that a PV guest can create writeable mappings using super page mappings. Such writeable mappings can violate Xen intended invariants for pages which Xen is supposed to keep read-only. This is possible even if the "allowsuperpage" command line option is not used.

Xen 3.4 and onward on x86 (both 32 and 64 bit) systems are vulnerable. Only PV guests can exploit the vulnerability.

Mitigation:

Running only HVM guests will avoid this vulnerability. On systems where the guest kernel is controlled by the host rather than guest administrator, running only kernels which do not call these hypercalls will also prevent untrusted guest users from exploiting this issue. However untrusted guest administrators can still trigger it unless further steps are taken to prevent them from loading code into the kernel (e.g. by disabling loadable modules etc) or from using other mechanisms which allow them to run code at kernel privilege.

Comment 1 Adam Mariš 2015-10-15 08:09:27 UTC
Created attachment 1083160 [details]
xen-unstable, Xen 4.6.x

Comment 2 Adam Mariš 2015-10-15 08:10:04 UTC
Created attachment 1083161 [details]
Xen 4.5.x

Comment 3 Adam Mariš 2015-10-15 08:10:42 UTC
Created attachment 1083162 [details]
Xen 4.4.x, Xen 4.3.x

Comment 4 Martin Prpič 2015-10-29 13:42:24 UTC
External References:

http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-148.html

Comment 5 Martin Prpič 2015-10-29 13:51:41 UTC
Created xen tracking bugs for this issue:

Affects: fedora-all [bug 1276344]

Comment 6 Fedora Update System 2015-11-08 22:21:09 UTC
xen-4.5.1-14.fc23 has been pushed to the Fedora 23 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.

Comment 7 Fedora Update System 2015-11-10 00:22:24 UTC
xen-4.5.1-14.fc22 has been pushed to the Fedora 22 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.

Comment 8 Fedora Update System 2015-11-10 00:50:32 UTC
xen-4.4.3-7.fc21 has been pushed to the Fedora 21 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.


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