Detections
Analytics

Xen CMPXCHG8B Emulation Information Disclosure (XSA-200)

low Nessus Plugin ID 96957

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Synopsis

The remote Xen hypervisor installation is missing a security update.

Description

According to its self-reported version number, the Xen hypervisor installed on the remote host is missing a security update. It is, therefore, affected by an information disclosure vulnerability due to a flaw in the x86 instruction CMPXCHG8B when handling prefixes. This is triggered because legacy operand size overrides are not properly ignored. A guest attacker can exploit this issue to disclose potentially sensitive information from the hypervisor stack of the host system.

Please note the following items :

 - Only x86 systems are affected. ARM systems are not affected.

 - On Xen version 4.6 and earlier, the vulnerability is exposed to all HVM guest user processes, including unprivileged processes.

 - On Xen version 4.7, the vulnerability is exposed only to HVM guest user processes granted a degree of privilege (e.g., direct hardware access) by the guest administrator, or else to all user processes when the VM has been explicitly configured with a non-default CPU vendor string (in xm/xl, this would be done with a 'cpuid=' domain config option).

Note that Nessus has not tested for this vulnerability but has instead relied only on the changeset versions based on the xen.git change log.
Nessus did not check guest hardware configurations or if patches were applied manually to the source code before a recompile and reinstall.

Solution

Apply the appropriate patch according to the vendor advisory.

See Also

https://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-200.html

https://xenbits.xen.org/gitweb/?p=xen.git;a=summary

Plugin Details

Severity: Low

ID: 96957

File Name: xen_server_XSA-200.nasl

Version: 1.7

Type: local

Family: Misc.

Published: 2/2/2017

Updated: 11/13/2019

Configuration: Enable paranoid mode

Supported Sensors: Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Low

Score: 1.4

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Low

Base Score: 2.1

Temporal Score: 1.6

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2016-9932

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Low

Base Score: 3.3

Temporal Score: 2.9

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:xen:xen

Required KB Items: installed_sw/Xen Hypervisor, Settings/ParanoidReport

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 12/13/2016

Vulnerability Publication Date: 12/13/2016

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2016-9932

BID: 94863