What is CVE-2023-46842?

CVE-2023-46842 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Xen, classified under Access of Resource Using Incompatible Type (Type Confusion). CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2024-05-16.

How severe is CVE-2023-46842?

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

Is CVE-2023-46842 known to be exploited?

1 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

Vulnerability in Xen

CVE-2023-46842

Unlike 32-bit PV guests, HVM guests may switch freely between 64-bit and other modes. This in particular means that they may set registers used to pass 32-bit-mode hypercall arguments to values outside of the range 32-bit code would be able to set them to. When processing of hypercalls takes a considerable amount of time, the hypervisor may choose to invoke a hypercall continuation. Doing so involves putting (perhaps updated) hypercall arguments in respective registers. For guests not running in 64-bit mode this further involves a certain amount of translation of the values. Unfortunately internal sanity checking of these translated values assumes high halves of registers to always be clear when invoking a hypercall. When this is found not to be the case, it triggers a consistency check in the hypervisor and causes a crash.

Published 2024-05-16 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 6.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.085 (94.9th percentile), scored 2026-09-30.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 95th percentile — 94.9% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.085 · newest: 0.085 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Xen — versions consult Xen advisory XSA-454
Fedoraproject Fedora — versions 38, 40

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-843 — Access of Resource Using Incompatible Type (Type Confusion)

Public proof-of-concept exploits

fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feeds

References

xenbits.xenproject.org/xsa/advisory-454.html (Patch, Vendor Advisory)
af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108 (Patch, Vendor Advisory)
af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108 (Mailing List, Third Party Advisory)
af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108 (Mailing List, Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2023-46842?: CVE-2023-46842 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Xen, classified under Access of Resource Using Incompatible Type (Type Confusion). CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2024-05-16.
How severe is CVE-2023-46842?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.5 out of 10.
Is CVE-2023-46842 known to be exploited?: 1 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.