Buffer overflow in Xen

CVE-2023-46837

Arm provides multiple helpers to clean & invalidate the cache for a given region. This is, for instance, used when allocating guest memory to ensure any writes (such as the ones during scrubbing) have reached memory before handing over the page to a guest. Unfortunately, the arithmetics in the helpers can overflow and would then result to skip the cache cleaning/invalidation. Therefore there is no guarantee when all the writes will reach the memory. This undefined behavior was meant to be addressed by XSA-437, but the approach was not sufficient.

Vulnerability class: Buffer Overflow

EPSS: 0.002 (15.4th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 3.3 (Low). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N.

Affected products

  • Xen — versions consult Xen advisory XSA-447

Weakness classification (CWE)

Public proof-of-concept exploits

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2023-46837?
CVE-2023-46837 is a low-severity vulnerability in Xen, classified under Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer. CVSS score: 3.3/10. Published 2024-01-05.
How severe is CVE-2023-46837?
Low severity. CVSS v3 base score is 3.3 out of 10.
Is CVE-2023-46837 known to be exploited?
1 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.