CVE-2023-46842: x86 HVM hypercalls may trigger Xen bug check

0.0 CVSS

Description

Unlike 32-bit PV guests, HVM guests may switch freely between 64-bit and
other modes. This in particular means that they may set registers used
to pass 32-bit-mode hypercall arguments to values outside of the range
32-bit code would be able to set them to.

When processing of hypercalls takes a considerable amount of time,
the hypervisor may choose to invoke a hypercall continuation. Doing so
involves putting (perhaps updated) hypercall arguments in respective
registers. For guests not running in 64-bit mode this further involves
a certain amount of translation of the values.

Unfortunately internal sanity checking of these translated values
assumes high halves of registers to always be clear when invoking a
hypercall. When this is found not to be the case, it triggers a
consistency check in the hypervisor and causes a crash.

Classification

CVE ID: CVE-2023-46842

CVSS Base Severity: LOW

CVSS Base Score: 0.0

Affected Products

Vendor: Xen

Product: Xen

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

EPSS Score: 0.04% (probability of being exploited)

EPSS Percentile: 11.44% (scored less or equal to compared to others)

EPSS Date: 2025-02-03 (when was this score calculated)

References

https://xenbits.xenproject.org/xsa/advisory-454.html

Timeline