XEN : Security Vulnerabilities, CVEs, CVSS score between 7 and 7.99

The caching invalidation guidelines from the AMD-Vi specification (48882—Rev 3.07-PUB—Oct 2022) is incorrect on some hardware, as devices will malfunction (see stale DMA mappings) if some fields of the DTE are updated but the IOMMU TLB is not flushed. Such stale DMA mappings can point to memory ranges not owned by the guest, thus allowing access to unindented memory regions.

[This CNA information record relates to multiple CVEs; the text explains which aspects/vulnerabilities correspond to which CVE.] libfsimage contains parsing code for several filesystems, most of them based on grub-legacy code. libfsimage is used by pygrub to inspect guest disks. Pygrub runs as the same user as the toolstack (root in a priviledged domain). At least one issue has been reported to the Xen Security Team that allows an attacker to trigger a stack buffer overflow in libfsimage. After further analisys the Xen Security Team is no longer confident in the suitability of libfsimage when run against guest controlled input with super user priviledges. In order to not affect current deployments that rely on pygrub patches are provided in the resolution section of the advisory that allow running pygrub in deprivileged mode. CVE-2023-4949 refers to the original issue in the upstream grub project ("An attacker with local access to a system (either through a disk or external drive) can present a modified XFS partition to grub-legacy in such a way to exploit a memory corruption in grub’s XFS file system implementation.") CVE-2023-34325 refers specifically to the vulnerabilities in Xen's copy of libfsimage, which is decended from a very old version of grub.

For migration as well as to work around kernels unaware of L1TF (see XSA-273), PV guests may be run in shadow paging mode. Since Xen itself needs to be mapped when PV guests run, Xen and shadowed PV guests run directly the respective shadow page tables. For 64-bit PV guests this means running on the shadow of the guest root page table. In the course of dealing with shortage of memory in the shadow pool associated with a domain, shadows of page tables may be torn down. This tearing down may include the shadow root page table that the CPU in question is presently running on. While a precaution exists to supposedly prevent the tearing down of the underlying live page table, the time window covered by that precaution isn't large enough.

The fix for XSA-423 added logic to Linux'es netback driver to deal with a frontend splitting a packet in a way such that not all of the headers would come in one piece. Unfortunately the logic introduced there didn't account for the extreme case of the entire packet being split into as many pieces as permitted by the protocol, yet still being smaller than the area that's specially dealt with to keep all (possible) headers together. Such an unusual packet would therefore trigger a buffer overrun in the driver.

x86 shadow paging arbitrary pointer dereference In environments where host assisted address translation is necessary but Hardware Assisted Paging (HAP) is unavailable, Xen will run guests in so called shadow mode. Due to too lax a check in one of the hypervisor routines used for shadow page handling it is possible for a guest with a PCI device passed through to cause the hypervisor to access an arbitrary pointer partially under guest control.

x86 shadow plus log-dirty mode use-after-free In environments where host assisted address translation is necessary but Hardware Assisted Paging (HAP) is unavailable, Xen will run guests in so called shadow mode. Shadow mode maintains a pool of memory used for both shadow page tables as well as auxiliary data structures. To migrate or snapshot guests, Xen additionally runs them in so called log-dirty mode. The data structures needed by the log-dirty tracking are part of aformentioned auxiliary data. In order to keep error handling efforts within reasonable bounds, for operations which may require memory allocations shadow mode logic ensures up front that enough memory is available for the worst case requirements. Unfortunately, while page table memory is properly accounted for on the code path requiring the potential establishing of new shadows, demands by the log-dirty infrastructure were not taken into consideration. As a result, just established shadow page tables could be freed again immediately, while other code is still accessing them on the assumption that they would remain allocated.

Guests can cause Xenstore crash via soft reset When a guest issues a "Soft Reset" (e.g. for performing a kexec) the libxl based Xen toolstack will normally perform a XS_RELEASE Xenstore operation. Due to a bug in xenstored this can result in a crash of xenstored. Any other use of XS_RELEASE will have the same impact.

x86: unintended memory sharing between guests 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.

Xenstore: Guests can get access to Xenstore nodes of deleted domains 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. There is a small time window when a new domain is created, where the access rights of a past domain with the same domid as the new one will be regarded to be still valid, leading to the new domain being able to get access to a node which was meant to be accessible by the removed domain. For this to happen another domain needs to write the node before the newly created domain is being introduced to Xenstore by dom0.

network backend may cause Linux netfront to use freed SKBs While adding logic to support XDP (eXpress Data Path), a code label was moved in a way allowing for SKBs having references (pointers) retained for further processing to nevertheless be freed.

Linux disk/nic frontends data leaks T[his CNA information record relates to multiple CVEs; the text explains which aspects/vulnerabilities correspond to which CVE.] Linux Block and Network PV device frontends don't zero memory regions before sharing them with the backend (CVE-2022-26365, CVE-2022-33740). Additionally the granularity of the grant table doesn't allow sharing less than a 4K page, leading to unrelated data residing in the same 4K page as data shared with a backend being accessible by such backend (CVE-2022-33741, CVE-2022-33742).

Linux disk/nic frontends data leaks T[his CNA information record relates to multiple CVEs; the text explains which aspects/vulnerabilities correspond to which CVE.] Linux Block and Network PV device frontends don't zero memory regions before sharing them with the backend (CVE-2022-26365, CVE-2022-33740). Additionally the granularity of the grant table doesn't allow sharing less than a 4K page, leading to unrelated data residing in the same 4K page as data shared with a backend being accessible by such backend (CVE-2022-33741, CVE-2022-33742).

Linux disk/nic frontends data leaks T[his CNA information record relates to multiple CVEs; the text explains which aspects/vulnerabilities correspond to which CVE.] Linux Block and Network PV device frontends don't zero memory regions before sharing them with the backend (CVE-2022-26365, CVE-2022-33740). Additionally the granularity of the grant table doesn't allow sharing less than a 4K page, leading to unrelated data residing in the same 4K page as data shared with a backend being accessible by such backend (CVE-2022-33741, CVE-2022-33742).

Linux disk/nic frontends data leaks T[his CNA information record relates to multiple CVEs; the text explains which aspects/vulnerabilities correspond to which CVE.] Linux Block and Network PV device frontends don't zero memory regions before sharing them with the backend (CVE-2022-26365, CVE-2022-33740). Additionally the granularity of the grant table doesn't allow sharing less than a 4K page, leading to unrelated data residing in the same 4K page as data shared with a backend being accessible by such backend (CVE-2022-33741, CVE-2022-33742).

x86 pv: Insufficient care with non-coherent mappings T[his CNA information record relates to multiple CVEs; the text explains which aspects/vulnerabilities correspond to which CVE.] Xen maintains a type reference count for pages, in addition to a regular reference count. This scheme is used to maintain invariants required for Xen's safety, e.g. PV guests may not have direct writeable access to pagetables; updates need auditing by Xen. Unfortunately, Xen's safety logic doesn't account for CPU-induced cache non-coherency; cases where the CPU can cause the content of the cache to be different to the content in main memory. In such cases, Xen's safety logic can incorrectly conclude that the contents of a page is safe.

x86 pv: Insufficient care with non-coherent mappings T[his CNA information record relates to multiple CVEs; the text explains which aspects/vulnerabilities correspond to which CVE.] Xen maintains a type reference count for pages, in addition to a regular reference count. This scheme is used to maintain invariants required for Xen's safety, e.g. PV guests may not have direct writeable access to pagetables; updates need auditing by Xen. Unfortunately, Xen's safety logic doesn't account for CPU-induced cache non-coherency; cases where the CPU can cause the content of the cache to be different to the content in main memory. In such cases, Xen's safety logic can incorrectly conclude that the contents of a page is safe.

IOMMU: RMRR (VT-d) and unity map (AMD-Vi) handling issues T[his CNA information record relates to multiple CVEs; the text explains which aspects/vulnerabilities correspond to which CVE.] 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 of these regions is unknown, once a device associated with such a region is active, the mappings of these regions need to remain continuouly accessible by the device. This requirement has been violated. Subsequent DMA or interrupts from the device may have unpredictable behaviour, ranging from IOMMU faults to memory corruption.

IOMMU: RMRR (VT-d) and unity map (AMD-Vi) handling issues T[his CNA information record relates to multiple CVEs; the text explains which aspects/vulnerabilities correspond to which CVE.] 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 of these regions is unknown, once a device associated with such a region is active, the mappings of these regions need to remain continuouly accessible by the device. This requirement has been violated. Subsequent DMA or interrupts from the device may have unpredictable behaviour, ranging from IOMMU faults to memory corruption.

IOMMU: RMRR (VT-d) and unity map (AMD-Vi) handling issues T[his CNA information record relates to multiple CVEs; the text explains which aspects/vulnerabilities correspond to which CVE.] 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 of these regions is unknown, once a device associated with such a region is active, the mappings of these regions need to remain continuouly accessible by the device. This requirement has been violated. Subsequent DMA or interrupts from the device may have unpredictable behaviour, ranging from IOMMU faults to memory corruption.

IOMMU: RMRR (VT-d) and unity map (AMD-Vi) handling issues T[his CNA information record relates to multiple CVEs; the text explains which aspects/vulnerabilities correspond to which CVE.] 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 of these regions is unknown, once a device associated with such a region is active, the mappings of these regions need to remain continuouly accessible by the device. This requirement has been violated. Subsequent DMA or interrupts from the device may have unpredictable behaviour, ranging from IOMMU faults to memory corruption.

race in VT-d domain ID cleanup Xen domain IDs are up to 15 bits wide. VT-d hardware may allow for only less than 15 bits to hold a domain ID associating a physical device with a particular domain. Therefore internally Xen domain IDs are mapped to the smaller value range. The cleaning up of the housekeeping structures has a race, allowing for VT-d domain IDs to be leaked and flushes to be bypassed.

Linux PV device frontends vulnerable to attacks by backends T[his CNA information record relates to multiple CVEs; the text explains which aspects/vulnerabilities correspond to which CVE.] Several Linux PV device frontends are using the grant table interfaces for removing access rights of the backends in ways being subject to race conditions, resulting in potential data leaks, data corruption by malicious backends, and denial of service triggered by malicious backends: blkfront, netfront, scsifront and the gntalloc driver are testing whether a grant reference is still in use. If this is not the case, they assume that a following removal of the granted access will always succeed, which is not true in case the backend has mapped the granted page between those two operations. As a result the backend can keep access to the memory page of the guest no matter how the page will be used after the frontend I/O has finished. The xenbus driver has a similar problem, as it doesn't check the success of removing the granted access of a shared ring buffer. blkfront: CVE-2022-23036 netfront: CVE-2022-23037 scsifront: CVE-2022-23038 gntalloc: CVE-2022-23039 xenbus: CVE-2022-23040 blkfront, netfront, scsifront, usbfront, dmabuf, xenbus, 9p, kbdfront, and pvcalls are using a functionality to delay freeing a grant reference until it is no longer in use, but the freeing of the related data page is not synchronized with dropping the granted access. As a result the backend can keep access to the memory page even after it has been freed and then re-used for a different purpose. CVE-2022-23041 netfront will fail a BUG_ON() assertion if it fails to revoke access in the rx path. This will result in a Denial of Service (DoS) situation of the guest which can be triggered by the backend. CVE-2022-23042

Linux PV device frontends vulnerable to attacks by backends T[his CNA information record relates to multiple CVEs; the text explains which aspects/vulnerabilities correspond to which CVE.] Several Linux PV device frontends are using the grant table interfaces for removing access rights of the backends in ways being subject to race conditions, resulting in potential data leaks, data corruption by malicious backends, and denial of service triggered by malicious backends: blkfront, netfront, scsifront and the gntalloc driver are testing whether a grant reference is still in use. If this is not the case, they assume that a following removal of the granted access will always succeed, which is not true in case the backend has mapped the granted page between those two operations. As a result the backend can keep access to the memory page of the guest no matter how the page will be used after the frontend I/O has finished. The xenbus driver has a similar problem, as it doesn't check the success of removing the granted access of a shared ring buffer. blkfront: CVE-2022-23036 netfront: CVE-2022-23037 scsifront: CVE-2022-23038 gntalloc: CVE-2022-23039 xenbus: CVE-2022-23040 blkfront, netfront, scsifront, usbfront, dmabuf, xenbus, 9p, kbdfront, and pvcalls are using a functionality to delay freeing a grant reference until it is no longer in use, but the freeing of the related data page is not synchronized with dropping the granted access. As a result the backend can keep access to the memory page even after it has been freed and then re-used for a different purpose. CVE-2022-23041 netfront will fail a BUG_ON() assertion if it fails to revoke access in the rx path. This will result in a Denial of Service (DoS) situation of the guest which can be triggered by the backend. CVE-2022-23042

Linux PV device frontends vulnerable to attacks by backends T[his CNA information record relates to multiple CVEs; the text explains which aspects/vulnerabilities correspond to which CVE.] Several Linux PV device frontends are using the grant table interfaces for removing access rights of the backends in ways being subject to race conditions, resulting in potential data leaks, data corruption by malicious backends, and denial of service triggered by malicious backends: blkfront, netfront, scsifront and the gntalloc driver are testing whether a grant reference is still in use. If this is not the case, they assume that a following removal of the granted access will always succeed, which is not true in case the backend has mapped the granted page between those two operations. As a result the backend can keep access to the memory page of the guest no matter how the page will be used after the frontend I/O has finished. The xenbus driver has a similar problem, as it doesn't check the success of removing the granted access of a shared ring buffer. blkfront: CVE-2022-23036 netfront: CVE-2022-23037 scsifront: CVE-2022-23038 gntalloc: CVE-2022-23039 xenbus: CVE-2022-23040 blkfront, netfront, scsifront, usbfront, dmabuf, xenbus, 9p, kbdfront, and pvcalls are using a functionality to delay freeing a grant reference until it is no longer in use, but the freeing of the related data page is not synchronized with dropping the granted access. As a result the backend can keep access to the memory page even after it has been freed and then re-used for a different purpose. CVE-2022-23041 netfront will fail a BUG_ON() assertion if it fails to revoke access in the rx path. This will result in a Denial of Service (DoS) situation of the guest which can be triggered by the backend. CVE-2022-23042

Linux PV device frontends vulnerable to attacks by backends T[his CNA information record relates to multiple CVEs; the text explains which aspects/vulnerabilities correspond to which CVE.] Several Linux PV device frontends are using the grant table interfaces for removing access rights of the backends in ways being subject to race conditions, resulting in potential data leaks, data corruption by malicious backends, and denial of service triggered by malicious backends: blkfront, netfront, scsifront and the gntalloc driver are testing whether a grant reference is still in use. If this is not the case, they assume that a following removal of the granted access will always succeed, which is not true in case the backend has mapped the granted page between those two operations. As a result the backend can keep access to the memory page of the guest no matter how the page will be used after the frontend I/O has finished. The xenbus driver has a similar problem, as it doesn't check the success of removing the granted access of a shared ring buffer. blkfront: CVE-2022-23036 netfront: CVE-2022-23037 scsifront: CVE-2022-23038 gntalloc: CVE-2022-23039 xenbus: CVE-2022-23040 blkfront, netfront, scsifront, usbfront, dmabuf, xenbus, 9p, kbdfront, and pvcalls are using a functionality to delay freeing a grant reference until it is no longer in use, but the freeing of the related data page is not synchronized with dropping the granted access. As a result the backend can keep access to the memory page even after it has been freed and then re-used for a different purpose. CVE-2022-23041 netfront will fail a BUG_ON() assertion if it fails to revoke access in the rx path. This will result in a Denial of Service (DoS) situation of the guest which can be triggered by the backend. CVE-2022-23042