CVE-2020-25596
An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.14.x. x86 PV guest kernels can experience denial of service via SYSENTER.
Does this matter?
Lower severity and a low EPSS score (0.51%). Track it; it rarely justifies an emergency change on its own.
Description
An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.14.x. x86 PV guest kernels can experience denial of service via SYSENTER. The SYSENTER instruction leaves various state sanitization activities to software. One of Xen's sanitization paths injects a #GP fault, and incorrectly delivers it twice to the guest. This causes the guest kernel to observe a kernel-privilege #GP fault (typically fatal) rather than a user-privilege #GP fault (usually converted into SIGSEGV/etc.). Malicious or buggy userspace can crash the guest kernel, resulting in a VM Denial of Service. All versions of Xen from 3.2 onwards are vulnerable. Only x86 systems are vulnerable. ARM platforms are not vulnerable. Only x86 systems that support the SYSENTER instruction in 64bit mode are vulnerable. This is believed to be Intel, Centaur, and Shanghai CPUs. AMD and Hygon CPUs are not believed to be vulnerable. Only x86 PV guests can exploit the vulnerability. x86 PVH / HVM guests cannot exploit the vulnerability.
- CVSS 3.1
- 5.5 MEDIUMCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- EPSS
- 0.51% probability · 43th percentile
- Public exploits
- None in Exploit-DB
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-74
- Affected
- xen/xen · fedoraproject/fedora · debian/debian linux · opensuse/leap
- Source
- cve@mitre.org
EPSS 0.5% since 26 October 2026; no change recorded yet. Points are recorded when the score first appears and whenever it moves by a percentage point or more.
References
- http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-10/msg00008.htmlThird Party Advisory
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/4JRXMKEMQRQYWYEPHVBIWUEAVQ3LU4FN/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/DA633Y3G5KX7MKRN4PFEGM3IVTJMBEOM/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/RJZERRBJN6E6STDCHT4JHP4MI6TKBCJE/
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202011-06Third Party Advisory
- https://www.debian.org/security/2020/dsa-4769Third Party Advisory
- https://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-339.htmlPatch, Vendor Advisory
- http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-10/msg00008.htmlThird Party Advisory
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/4JRXMKEMQRQYWYEPHVBIWUEAVQ3LU4FN/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/DA633Y3G5KX7MKRN4PFEGM3IVTJMBEOM/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/RJZERRBJN6E6STDCHT4JHP4MI6TKBCJE/
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202011-06Third Party Advisory
- https://www.debian.org/security/2020/dsa-4769Third Party Advisory
- https://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-339.htmlPatch, Vendor Advisory
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.