CVE-2018-12891

An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.10.x. Certain PV MMU operations may take a long time to process. For that reason Xen explicitly checks for the need to preempt the current vCPU at certain points. A few rarely taken code paths did bypass such checks. By suitably enforcing the conditions through its own page table contents, a malicious guest may cause such bypasses to be used for an unbounded number of iterations. A malicious or buggy PV guest may cause a Denial of Service (DoS) affecting the entire host. Specifically, it may prevent use of a physical CPU for an indeterminate period of time. All Xen versions from 3.4 onwards are vulnerable. Xen versions 3.3 and earlier are vulnerable to an even wider class of attacks, due to them lacking preemption checks altogether in the affected code paths. Only x86 systems are affected. ARM systems are not affected. Only multi-vCPU x86 PV guests can leverage the vulnerability. x86 HVM or PVH guests as well as x86 single-vCPU PV ones cannot leverage the vulnerability.

• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2018/06/27/10Mailing List, Patch, Third Party Advisory
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/104570Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry
• http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1041201Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry
• http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-264.htmlPatch, Vendor Advisory
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2018/11/msg00013.htmlIssue Tracking, Third Party Advisory
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201810-06Third Party Advisory
• https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX235748Third Party Advisory
• https://www.debian.org/security/2018/dsa-4236Third Party Advisory
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2018/06/27/10Mailing List, Patch, Third Party Advisory
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/104570Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry
• http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1041201Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry
• http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-264.htmlPatch, Vendor Advisory
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2018/11/msg00013.htmlIssue Tracking, Third Party Advisory
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201810-06Third Party Advisory
• https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX235748Third Party Advisory
• https://www.debian.org/security/2018/dsa-4236Third Party Advisory

Published

Jul 2, 2018

Last Modified

Jun 17, 2026

Status

Modified