CVE-2019-19577

Summary

CVECVE-2019-19577
StatePUBLIC
Assigner[email protected]
Source PriorityCVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback
Published2019-12-11 18:16:00 UTC
Updated2023-11-07 03:07:00 UTC
DescriptionAn issue was discovered in Xen through 4.12.x allowing x86 AMD HVM guest OS users to cause a denial of service or possibly gain privileges by triggering data-structure access during pagetable-height updates. When running on AMD systems with an IOMMU, Xen attempted to dynamically adapt the number of levels of pagetables (the pagetable height) in the IOMMU according to the guest's address space size. The code to select and update the height had several bugs. Notably, the update was done without taking a lock which is necessary for safe operation. A malicious guest administrator can cause Xen to access data structures while they are being modified, causing Xen to crash. Privilege escalation is thought to be very difficult but cannot be ruled out. Additionally, there is a potential memory leak of 4kb per guest boot, under memory pressure. Only Xen on AMD CPUs is vulnerable. Xen running on Intel CPUs is not vulnerable. ARM systems are not vulnerable. Only systems where guests are given direct access to physical devices are vulnerable. Systems which do not use PCI pass-through are not vulnerable. Only HVM guests can exploit the vulnerability. PV and PVH guests cannot. All versions of Xen with IOMMU support are vulnerable.

Risk And Classification

Problem Types: CWE-401 | CWE-662

NVD Known Affected Configurations (CPE 2.3)

TypeVendorProductVersionUpdateEditionLanguage
Operating System Fedoraproject Fedora 31 All All All
Operating System Fedoraproject Fedora 31 All All All
Operating System Xen Xen All All All All

References

ReferenceSourceLinkTags
Debian -- Security Information -- DSA-4602-1 xen DEBIAN www.debian.org
Xen: Multiple vulnerabilities (GLSA 202003-56) — Gentoo security GENTOO security.gentoo.org
[SECURITY] Fedora 31 Update: xen-4.12.1-8.fc31 - package-announce - Fedora Mailing-Lists FEDORA lists.fedoraproject.org Third Party Advisory
[SECURITY] Fedora 30 Update: xen-4.11.3-2.fc30 - package-announce - Fedora Mailing-Lists FEDORA lists.fedoraproject.org
[SECURITY] Fedora 31 Update: xen-4.12.1-8.fc31 - package-announce - Fedora Mailing-Lists lists.fedoraproject.org
XSA-311 - Xen Security Advisories MISC xenbits.xen.org Patch, Vendor Advisory
[security-announce] openSUSE-SU-2020:0011-1: important: Security update SUSE lists.opensuse.org
Bugtraq: [SECURITY] [DSA 4602-1] xen security update BUGTRAQ seclists.org
[SECURITY] Fedora 30 Update: xen-4.11.3-2.fc30 - package-announce - Fedora Mailing-Lists lists.fedoraproject.org
CVE Program record CVE.ORG www.cve.org canonical
NVD vulnerability detail NVD nvd.nist.gov canonical, analysis

Legacy QID Mappings

  • 378871 Citrix XenServer Security Updates (CTX266932)
  • 500754 Alpine Linux Security Update for xen
  • 504531 Alpine Linux Security Update for xen
© CVE.report 2026 |

Use of this information constitutes acceptance for use in an AS IS condition. There are NO warranties, implied or otherwise, with regard to this information or its use. Any use of this information is at the user's risk. It is the responsibility of user to evaluate the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any information, opinion, advice or other content. EACH USER WILL BE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY consequences of his or her direct or indirect use of this web site. ALL WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED. This site will NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT or any other kind of loss.

CVE, CWE, and OVAL are registred trademarks of The MITRE Corporation and the authoritative source of CVE content is MITRE's CVE web site. This site includes MITRE data granted under the following license.

CVE.report and Source URL Uptime Status status.cve.report