x86/AMD: ineffectual Zenbleed workaround
Summary
| CVE | CVE-2026-79608 |
|---|---|
| State | PUBLISHED |
| Assigner | XEN |
| Source Priority | CVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback |
| Published | 2026-10-13 16:17:23 UTC |
| Updated | 2026-10-14 16:10:14 UTC |
| Description | The workaround for XSA-433 (Zenbleed, CVE-2023-20593) was later re-worked to better integrate with other manipulations of the same MSR. In this rework an inverted conditional was introduced, resulting in the workaround to not be applied when needed and vice versa. For more details, see: http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-433.html |
Vendor Declared Affected Products
References
| Reference | Source | Link | Tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| xenbits.xenproject.org/xsa/advisory-515.html | [email protected] | xenbits.xenproject.org | |
| xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-515.html | af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108 | xenbits.xen.org | |
| CVE Program record | CVE.ORG | www.cve.org | canonical |
| NVD vulnerability detail | NVD | nvd.nist.gov | canonical, analysis |
Vendor Comments And Credit
Discovery Credit
CNA: This issue was discovered by Sashiko + Opus 5.0 and diagnosed as a security issue by George Dunlap. (en)
Additional Advisory Data
Workarounds
CNA: This issue can be mitigated by disabling AVX, either by booting Xen with `cpuid=no-avx` on the command line, or by specifying `cpuid="host:avx=0"` in the vm.cfg file of all untrusted VMs. However, this will come with a significant impact on the system and is not recommended for anyone able to deploy the microcode or patch described below.
There are currently no legacy QID mappings associated with this CVE.