[Xen-devel] Xen Security Advisory 54 (CVE-2013-2078) - Hypervisor crash due to missing exception recovery on XSETBV

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

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             Xen Security Advisory CVE-2013-2078 / XSA-54
                            version 4

       Hypervisor crash due to missing exception recovery on XSETBV

UPDATES IN VERSION 4
====================

Reduce vulnerable range of versions to 4.1 and onwards.

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

Processors do certain validity checks on the register values passed to
XSETBV.  For the PV emulation path for that instruction the hypervisor
code didn't check for certain invalid bit combinations, thus exposing
itself to a fault occurring when invoking that instruction on behalf
of the guest.

IMPACT
======

Malicious or buggy unprivileged user space can cause the entire host
to crash.

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

Xen 4.1 and onwards are vulnerable when run on systems with processors
supporting XSAVE.  Only PV guests can exploit the vulnerability.

In Xen 4.1 XSAVE support is disabled by default; therefore systems
running these versions are not vulnerable unless support is explicitly
enabled using the "xsave" hypervisor command line option.

Systems using processors not supporting XSAVE are not vulnerable.

Xen 3.x and earlier are not vulnerable. In particular, Xen 4.0.x is not
vulnerable because XSAVE support there covers only HVM guests.

MITIGATION
==========

Turning off XSAVE support via the "no-xsave" hypervisor command line
option will avoid the vulnerability.

RESOLUTION
==========

Applying the attached patch resolves this issue.

xsa54.patch                 Xen 4.1.x, Xen 4.2.x, xen-unstable

$ sha256sum xsa54-*.patch
5d94946b3c9cba52aae2bffd4b0ebb11d09181650b5322a3c85170674a05f6b7  xsa54.patch
$
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Attachment: xsa54.patch
Description: Binary data

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