What is CVE-2018-7542?

CVE-2018-7542 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Xen, classified under NULL Pointer Dereference. CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2018-02-27.

How severe is CVE-2018-7542?

Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.5 out of 10.

NULL pointer dereference in Xen

CVE-2018-7542

An issue was discovered in Xen 4.8.x through 4.10.x allowing x86 PVH guest OS users to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and hypervisor crash) by leveraging the mishandling of configurations that lack a Local APIC.

Published 2018-02-27 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 6.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.004 (29.6th percentile), scored 2026-09-30.

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 30th percentile — 29.6% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.004 · newest: 0.004 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Xen
Debian Linux — versions 9.0

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-476 — NULL Pointer Dereference

References

xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-256.html (Vendor Advisory)
security.gentoo.org/glsa/201810-06 (vendor-advisory)
www.securitytracker.com/id/1040776 (vdb-entry)
www.debian.org/security/2018/dsa-4131 (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2018-7542?: CVE-2018-7542 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Xen, classified under NULL Pointer Dereference. CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2018-02-27.
How severe is CVE-2018-7542?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.5 out of 10.