[Xen-announce] Xen Security Advisory 23 (CVE-2012-4538) - Unhooking empty PAE entries DoS vulnerability

[Xen.org security team <security@xxxxxxx>]

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                 Xen Security Advisory CVE-2012-4538 / XSA-23
                                version 2

                Unhooking empty PAE entries DoS vulnerability

UPDATES IN VERSION 2
====================

Public release.

ISSUE DESCRIPTION
=================

The HVMOP_pagetable_dying hypercall does not correctly check the
caller's pagetable state, leading to a hypervisor crash.

IMPACT
======

An HVM guest running on shadow pagetables (that is, not HAP) can
cause the hypervisor to crash.

VULNERABLE SYSTEMS
==================

All Xen versions from 4.0 onwards are vulnerable, except that:
 - systems that run only PV guests are not vulnerable
 - systems that run all HVM guests using HAP (which is the default on
   hardware that supports it) are not vulnerable.

MITIGATION
==========

This issue can be avoided by running only PV guests or by running
all HVM guests using hardware-assisited paging (HAP, also called
NPT, RVI and EPT).

Xen will run guests using HAP by default on hardware that
supports it, unless it is disbled by putting 'hap=0' either on
the xen hypervisor command-line or in the VM's configuration.

You can check whether a particular machine supports HAP by looking at
xen's boot messages.  On Xen 4.1, 4.2 and unstable, Xen will print
"HVM: Hardware Assisted Paging (HAP) detected" during boot; on xen 4.0
the message is "HVM: Hardware Assisted Paging detected".

RESOLUTION
==========

Applying the appropriate attached patch resolves this issue.

xsa23-4.0-4.1.patch         Xen 4.0.x, 4.1.x
xsa23-4.2-unstable.patch    Xen 4.2.x, xen-unstable

$ sha256sum xsa23*.patch
f696d597481595b14ac9577d1dad05fc97da68568f52db74d62f2e3dcb2c7a6e  
xsa23-4.0-4.1.patch
70ffea07e58e4a747bf3ec103f656ba2cd0d8986722e6a72023c57d802c65964  
xsa23-4.2-unstable.patch
$
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Attachment: xsa23-4.0-4.1.patch
Description: Binary data

Attachment: xsa23-4.2-unstable.patch
Description: Binary data

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