SOC status:Duty analyst on shift

UK Cyber Defence
VulnerabilityModified

CVE-2020-29569

A misbehaving guest can trigger a dom0 crash by continuously connecting / disconnecting a block frontend.

HIGH 8.8EPSS 0.39%

Does this matter?

High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.39%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.

Description

An issue was discovered in the Linux kernel through 5.10.1, as used with Xen through 4.14.x. The Linux kernel PV block backend expects the kernel thread handler to reset ring->xenblkd to NULL when stopped. However, the handler may not have time to run if the frontend quickly toggles between the states connect and disconnect. As a consequence, the block backend may re-use a pointer after it was freed. A misbehaving guest can trigger a dom0 crash by continuously connecting / disconnecting a block frontend. Privilege escalation and information leaks cannot be ruled out. This only affects systems with a Linux blkback.

CVSS 3.1
8.8 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS
0.39% probability · 33th percentile
CISA KEV
Not listed
Weakness
CWE-416
Affected
xen/xen · linux/linux kernel · netapp/hci compute node bios · netapp/solidfire \& hci management node · netapp/solidfire \& hci storage node · debian/debian linux
Source
cve@mitre.org

Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.