CVE-2020-11739 Information

Description

An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.13.x allowing guest OS users to cause a denial of service or possibly gain privileges because of missing memory barriers in read-write unlock paths. The read-write unlock paths don’t contain a memory barrier. On Arm this means a processor is allowed to re-order the memory access with the preceding ones. In other words the unlock may be seen by another processor before all the memory accesses within the \critical\ section. As a consequence it may be possible to have a writer executing a critical section at the same time as readers or another writer. In other words many of the assumptions (e.g. a variable cannot be modified after a check) in the critical sections are not safe anymore. The read-write locks are used in hypercalls (such as grant-table ones) so a malicious guest could exploit the race. For instance there is a small window where Xen can leak memory if XENMAPSPACE_grant_table is used concurrently. A malicious guest may be able to leak memory or cause a hypervisor crash resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS). Information leak and privilege escalation cannot be excluded.

CVSS Vector

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

Reference

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-05/msg00006.html http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2020/04/14/2 http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-314.html https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/5M2XRNCHOGGTJQBZQJ7DCV6ZNAKN3LE2/ https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/NVTP4OYHCTRU3ONFJOFJQVNDFB25KLLG/ https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/YMAW7D2MP6RE4BFI5BZWOBBWGY3VSOFN/ https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202005-08 https://www.debian.org/security/2020/dsa-4723 https://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-314.html

Attack Complexity

HIGH

Privileges Required

LOW

User Interaction Required

LOW

Scope

NONE

Confidentiality Impact

CHANGED

Integrity Impact

HIGH

Availability Impact

HIGH

Base Score

HIGH

Base Severity

7.8