Vulnerability in Xen
CVE-2021-28697
grant table v2 status pages may remain accessible after de-allocation Guest get permitted access to certain Xen-owned pages of memory. The majority of such pages remain allocated / associated with a guest for its entire lifetime. Grant table v2 status pages, however, get de-allocated when a guest switched (back) from v2 to v1. The freeing of such pages requires that the hypervisor know where in the guest these pages were mapped. The hypervisor tracks only one use within guest space, but racing requests from the guest to insert mappings of these pages may result in any of them to become mapped in multiple locations. Upon switching back from v2 to v1, the guest would then retain access to a page that was freed and perhaps re-used for other purposes.
Vulnerability class: Race Condition
EPSS: 0.003 (18.0th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.
CVSS v3 metric
CVSS v3 base score 7.8 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.
Affected products
- Xen — versions xen-unstable, unspecified, 4.13.x
- Debian Debian_linux — versions 11.0
- Fedoraproject Fedora — versions 33, 34, 35
Weakness classification (CWE)
Public proof-of-concept exploits
References
- security@xen.org (Third Party Advisory, x_refsource_MISC)
- security@xen.org (x_refsource_FEDORA, vendor-advisory)
- security@xen.org (x_refsource_FEDORA, vendor-advisory)
- security@xen.org (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory, x_refsource_DEBIAN)
- security@xen.org (x_refsource_FEDORA, vendor-advisory)
- security@xen.org (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory, x_refsource_GENTOO)
Frequently asked questions
- What is CVE-2021-28697?
- CVE-2021-28697 is a high-severity vulnerability in Xen, classified under Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization (Race Condition). CVSS score: 7.8/10. Published 2021-08-27.
- How severe is CVE-2021-28697?
- High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.8 out of 10.
- Is CVE-2021-28697 known to be exploited?
- 1 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.