CVE-2022-42336: Low severity xen xapi vulnerability

Published May 17, 2023
·
Updated

Mishandling of guest SSBD selection on AMD hardware The current logic to set SSBD on AMD Family 17h and Hygon Family 18h processors requires that the setting of SSBD is coordinated at a core level, as the setting is shared between threads. Logic was introduced to keep track of how many threads require SSBD active in order to coordinate it, such logic relies on using a per-core counter of threads that have SSBD active. When running on the mentioned hardware, it's possible for a guest to under or overflow the thread counter, because each write to VIRTSPECCTRL.SSBD by the guest gets propagated to the helper that does the per-core active accounting. Underflowing the counter causes the value to get saturated, and thus attempts for guests running on the same core to set SSBD won't have effect because the hypervisor assumes it's already active.

Affected Software

1 affected component
XEN Xen=4.17

Event History

May 17, 2023
CVE Published
via MITRE·12:00 AM
Data Sourced
via MITRE·12:00 AM
DescriptionWeakness
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Frequently Asked Questions

1

What is the vulnerability ID for this issue?

The vulnerability ID for this issue is CVE-2022-42336.

2

What is the severity rating of this vulnerability?

The severity rating of CVE-2022-42336 is low, with a severity value of 3.3.

3

What software is affected by this vulnerability?

The Xen Xen software version 4.17 is affected by CVE-2022-42336.

4

What is the impact of this vulnerability?

The impact of CVE-2022-42336 is not specified in the provided information.

5

Where can I find more information about this vulnerability?

You can find more information about CVE-2022-42336 at the following references: - [Fedora Project Announcement](https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/LTO3U3WYLAZW3KLPKJZ332FYUREXPZMQ/) - [Xen Project Advisory-431](https://xenbits.xenproject.org/xsa/advisory-431.txt)

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