The Ocaml xenstored implementation (oxenstored) in Xen 4.1.x, 4.2.x, and 4.3.x allows local guest domains to cause a denial of service (domain shutdown) via a large message reply.

It was found that a malicious HVM guest administrator can cause DoS, specifically prevent use of physical CPU for significant, perhaps indefinite period. When a benign exception occurs while delivering another benign exception, it is architecturally specified that these would be delivered sequentially. There are, however, cases where this results in an infinite loop inside the CPU, which (in the virtualized case) can be broken only by intercepting delivery of the respective exception.

When a guest sets up a hardware breakpoint covering a data structure involved in delivering #DB (Debug Exception), upon completion of the delivery of the first exception another #DB will need to be delivered. The effects slightly differ depending on further guest characteristics:

Guests running in 32-bit mode would be expected to sooner or later encounter another fault due to the stack pointer decreasing during each iteration of the loop. The most likely case would be #PF (Page Fault) due to running into unmapped virtual space. However, an infinite loop cannot be excluded (e.g. when the guest is running with paging disabled).

Guests running in long mode, but not using the IST (Interrupt Stack Table) feature for the IDT entry corresponding to #DB would behave similarly to guests running in 32-bit mode, just that the larger virtual address space allows for a much longer loop. The loop can't, however, be infinite, as eventually the stack pointer would move into non-canonical address space, causing #SS (Stack Fault) instead.

Guests running in long mode and using the IST for the IDT entry corresponding to #DB would enter an infinite loop, as the stack pointer wouldn't change between #DB instances.

If a host watchdog (Xen or dom0) is in use, this can lead to a watchdog timeout and consequently a reboot of the host. If another, innocent, guest, is configured with a watchdog, this issue can lead to a reboot of such a guest.

A privileged user inside guest could use this flaw to crash the host kernel resulting in DoS.

For KVM virtualisation, it only affects the AMD processor support, as for Intel it already intercepts the #DB exception.

Upstream KVM patch: ------------------- -> http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/2082332

References: ----------- -> http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2015/11/10/1

ISSUE DESCRIPTION =================

Guests are currently permitted to modify all of the (writable) bits in the PCI command register of devices passed through to them. This in particular allows them to disable memory and I/O decoding on the device unless the device is an SR-IOV virtual function, in which case subsequent accesses to the respective MMIO or I/O port ranges would - - on PCI Express devices - lead to Unsupported Request responses. The treatmeant of such errors is platform specific.

IMPACT ======

In the event that the platform surfaces aforementioned UR responses as Non-Maskable Interrupts, and either the OS is configured to treat NMIs as fatal or (e.g. via ACPI's APEI) the platform tells the OS to treat these errors as fatal, the host would crash, leading to a Denial of Service.

VULNERABLE SYSTEMS ==================

Xen versions 3.3 and onwards are vulnerable due to supporting PCI pass-through. Upstream Linux versions 3.1 and onwards are vulnerable due to supporting PCI backend functionality. Other Linux versions as well as other OS versions may be vulnerable too.

Any domain which is given access to a non-SR-IOV virtual function PCI Express device can take advantage of this vulnerability.

MITIGATION ==========

This issue can be avoided by not assigning PCI Express devices other than SR-IOV virtual functions to untrusted guests.

RESOLUTION ==========

Applying the attached patch resolves this issue for upstream Linux.

xsa120.patch Linux 3.19

$ sha256sum xsa120.patch 5167215293d4a8a05f090fca5b20eb5878213a0158a0e7a12c245553db81a855 xsa120.patch

Last updated 24 July 2024

Xen 3.0.3 through 4.1.x (possibly 4.1.6.1), 4.2.x (possibly 4.2.3), and 4.3.x (possibly 4.3.1) does not properly prevent access to hypercalls, which allows local guest users to gain privileges via a crafted application running in ring 1 or 2.

Xen before 4.1.x, 4.2.x, and 4.3.x does not take the pagealloclock and granttable.lock in the same order, which allows local guest administrators with access to multiple vcpus to cause a denial of service (host deadlock) via unspecified vectors.

Xen 4.2.x and 4.3.x, when nested virtualization is disabled, does not properly check the emulation paths for (1) VMLAUNCH and (2) VMRESUME, which allows local HVM guest users to cause a denial of service (host crash) via unspecified vectors related to "guest VMX instruction execution."

The XENDOMCTLgetmemlist hypercall in Xen 3.4.x through 4.3.x (possibly 4.3.1) does not always obtain the pagealloclock and mmrwlock in the same order, which allows local guest administrators to cause a denial of service (host deadlock).

Use-after-free vulnerability in the libxllistcpupool function in the libxl toolstack library in Xen 4.2.x and 4.3.x, when running "under memory pressure," returns the original pointer when the realloc function fails, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (heap corruption and crash) and possibly execute arbitrary code via unspecified vectors.

The outs instruction emulation in Xen 3.1.x, 4.2.x, 4.3.x, and earlier, when using FS: or GS: segment override, uses an uninitialized variable as a segment base, which allows local 64-bit PV guests to obtain sensitive information (hypervisor stack content) via unspecified vectors related to stale data in a segment register.

Xen 4.3.x writes hypervisor mappings to certain shadow pagetables when live migration is performed on hosts with more than 5TB of RAM, which allows local 64-bit PV guests to read or write to invalid memory and cause a denial of service (crash).

The ocaml binding for the xcvcpugetaffinity function in Xen 4.2.x and 4.3.x frees certain memory that may still be intended for use, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (heap corruption and crash) and possibly execute arbitrary code via unspecified vectors that trigger a (1) use-after-free or (2) double free.

The xluvifparserate function in the libxlu library in Xen 4.2.x and 4.3.x allows local users to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference) by using the "@" character as the VIF rate configuration.

The fbld instruction emulation in Xen 3.3.x through 4.3.x does not use the correct variable for the source effective address, which allows local HVM guests to obtain hypervisor stack information by reading the values used by the instruction.

Xen 4.3.x and earlier does not properly handle certain errors, which allows local HVM guests to obtain hypervisor stack memory via a (1) port or (2) memory mapped I/O write or (3) other unspecified operations related to addresses without associated memory.

The qdisk PV disk backend in qemu-xen in Xen 4.2.x and 4.3.x before 4.3.1, and qemu 1.1 and other versions, allows local HVM guests to cause a denial of service (domain grant reference consumption) via unspecified vectors.

The Intel VT-d Interrupt Remapping engine in Xen 3.3.x through 4.3.x allows local guests to cause a denial of service (kernel panic) via a malformed Message Signaled Interrupt (MSI) from a PCI device that is bus mastering capable that triggers a System Error Reporting (SERR) Non-Maskable Interrupt (NMI).

The vmxsetucmode function in Xen 3.3 through 4.3, when disabling caches, allows local HVM guests with access to memory mapped I/O regions to cause a denial of service (CPU consumption and possibly hypervisor or guest kernel panic) via a crafted GFN range.

The dommuupdate function in arch/x86/mm.c in Xen 3.2.x through 4.4.x does not properly manage page references, which allows remote domains to cause a denial of service by leveraging control over an HVM guest and a crafted MMUMACHPHYSUPDATE.

The compatibility mode hypercall argument translation in Xen 3.3.x through 4.4.x, when running on a 64-bit hypervisor, allows local 32-bit HVM guests to cause a denial of service (host crash) via vectors involving altering the high halves of registers while in 64-bit mode.

The dommuupdate function in arch/x86/mm.c in Xen 4.x through 4.4.x does not properly restrict updates to only PV page tables, which allows remote PV guests to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference) by leveraging hardware emulation services for HVM guests using Hardware Assisted Paging (HAP).

arch/x86/x86emulate/x86emulate.c in Xen 3.2.1 through 4.4.x does not properly check privileges, which allows local HVM guest users to gain privileges or cause a denial of service (crash) via a crafted (1) CALL, (2) JMP, (3) RETF, (4) LCALL, (5) LJMP, or (6) LRET far branch instruction.

The x86emulate function in arch/x86/x86emulate/x86emulate.c in Xen 3.3.x through 4.4.x does not check the supervisor mode permissions for instructions that generate software interrupts, which allows local HVM guest users to cause a denial of service (guest crash) via unspecified vectors.

Race condition in HVMOPtrackdirtyvram in Xen 4.0.0 through 4.4.x does not ensure possession of the guarding lock for dirty video RAM tracking, which allows certain local guest domains to cause a denial of service via unspecified vectors.

The x86emulate function in arch/x86/x86emulate/x86emulate.c in Xen 4.4.x and earlier does not properly check supervisor mode permissions, which allows local HVM users to cause a denial of service (guest crash) or gain guest kernel mode privileges via vectors involving an (1) HLT, (2) LGDT, (3) LIDT, or (4) LMSW instruction.

The hvmmsrreadintercept function in arch/x86/hvm/hvm.c in Xen 4.1 through 4.4.x uses an improper MSR range for x2APIC emulation, which allows local HVM guests to cause a denial of service (host crash) or read data from the hypervisor or other guests via unspecified vectors.

Certain MMU virtualization operations in Xen 4.2.x through 4.4.x before the xsa97-hap patch, when using Hardware Assisted Paging (HAP), are not preemptible, which allows local HVM guest to cause a denial of service (vcpu consumption) by invoking these operations, which process every page assigned to a guest, a different vulnerability than CVE-2014-5149.

Certain MMU virtualization operations in Xen 4.2.x through 4.4.x, when using shadow pagetables, are not preemptible, which allows local HVM guest to cause a denial of service (vcpu consumption) by invoking these operations, which process every page assigned to a guest, a different vulnerability than CVE-2014-5146.

Xen 4.6.x, 4.5.x, 4.4.x, 4.3.x, and earlier do not initialize x86 FPU stack and XMM registers when XSAVE/XRSTOR are not used to manage guest extended register state, which allows local guest domains to obtain sensitive information from other domains via unspecified vectors.

The memoryexchange function in common/memory.c in Xen 3.2.x through 4.6.x does not properly release locks, which might allow guest OS administrators to cause a denial of service (deadlock or host crash) via unspecified vectors, related to XENMEMexchange error handling.