Auth bypass in Xen

CVE-2020-29479

An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.14.x. In the Ocaml xenstored implementation, the internal representation of the tree has special cases for the root node, because this node has no parent. Unfortunately, permissions were not checked for certain operations on the root node. Unprivileged guests can get and modify permissions, list, and delete the root node. (Deleting the whole xenstore tree is a host-wide denial of service.) Achieving xenstore write access is also possible. All systems using oxenstored are vulnerable. Building and using oxenstored is the default in the upstream Xen distribution, if the Ocaml compiler is available. Systems using C xenstored are not vulnerable.

Vulnerability class: Broken Access Control

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 8.8 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.003 (21.3th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 21st percentile — 21.3% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2020-29479: held from 0.003 to 0.003.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.003 · newest: 0.003 · change: +0.000

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2020-29479?
CVE-2020-29479 is a high-severity vulnerability in Xen, classified under Missing Authorization. CVSS score: 8.8/10. Published 2020-12-15.
How severe is CVE-2020-29479?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 8.8 out of 10.