CVE-2023-46836 Affecting xen package, versions <4.17.2+76-ge1f9cb16e2-1~deb12u1


Severity

Recommended
0.0
medium
0
10

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Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.04% (11th percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-DEBIAN12-XEN-6057323
  • published15 Nov 2023
  • disclosed5 Jan 2024

Introduced: 15 Nov 2023

CVE-2023-46836  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade Debian:12 xen to version 4.17.2+76-ge1f9cb16e2-1~deb12u1 or higher.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream xen package and not the xen package as distributed by Debian. See How to fix? for Debian:12 relevant fixed versions and status.

The fixes for XSA-422 (Branch Type Confusion) and XSA-434 (Speculative Return Stack Overflow) are not IRQ-safe. It was believed that the mitigations always operated in contexts with IRQs disabled.

However, the original XSA-254 fix for Meltdown (XPTI) deliberately left interrupts enabled on two entry paths; one unconditionally, and one conditionally on whether XPTI was active.

As BTC/SRSO and Meltdown affect different CPU vendors, the mitigations are not active together by default. Therefore, there is a race condition whereby a malicious PV guest can bypass BTC/SRSO protections and launch a BTC/SRSO attack against Xen.

CVSS Scores

version 3.1