Vulnerabilities > CVE-2020-15563 - Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer vulnerability in multiple products
Summary
An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.13.x, allowing x86 HVM guest OS users to cause a hypervisor crash. An inverted conditional in x86 HVM guests' dirty video RAM tracking code allows such guests to make Xen de-reference a pointer guaranteed to point at unmapped space. A malicious or buggy HVM guest may cause the hypervisor to crash, resulting in Denial of Service (DoS) affecting the entire host. Xen versions from 4.8 onwards are affected. Xen versions 4.7 and earlier are not affected. Only x86 systems are affected. Arm systems are not affected. Only x86 HVM guests using shadow paging can leverage the vulnerability. In addition, there needs to be an entity actively monitoring a guest's video frame buffer (typically for display purposes) in order for such a guest to be able to leverage the vulnerability. x86 PV guests, as well as x86 HVM guests using hardware assisted paging (HAP), cannot leverage the vulnerability.
Vulnerable Configurations
| Part | Description | Count |
|---|---|---|
| OS | 16 | |
| OS | 1 | |
| OS | 2 | |
| OS | 1 |
Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)
Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)
- Buffer Overflow via Environment Variables This attack pattern involves causing a buffer overflow through manipulation of environment variables. Once the attacker finds that they can modify an environment variable, they may try to overflow associated buffers. This attack leverages implicit trust often placed in environment variables.
- Overflow Buffers Buffer Overflow attacks target improper or missing bounds checking on buffer operations, typically triggered by input injected by an attacker. As a consequence, an attacker is able to write past the boundaries of allocated buffer regions in memory, causing a program crash or potentially redirection of execution as per the attackers' choice.
- Client-side Injection-induced Buffer Overflow This type of attack exploits a buffer overflow vulnerability in targeted client software through injection of malicious content from a custom-built hostile service.
- Filter Failure through Buffer Overflow In this attack, the idea is to cause an active filter to fail by causing an oversized transaction. An attacker may try to feed overly long input strings to the program in an attempt to overwhelm the filter (by causing a buffer overflow) and hoping that the filter does not fail securely (i.e. the user input is let into the system unfiltered).
- MIME Conversion An attacker exploits a weakness in the MIME conversion routine to cause a buffer overflow and gain control over the mail server machine. The MIME system is designed to allow various different information formats to be interpreted and sent via e-mail. Attack points exist when data are converted to MIME compatible format and back.
References
- http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-319.html
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2020/07/07/3
- https://www.debian.org/security/2020/dsa-4723
- http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-07/msg00024.html
- http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-07/msg00031.html
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202007-02
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/VB3QJJZV23Z2IDYEMIHELWYSQBUEW6JP/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/MXESCOVI7AVRNC7HEAMFM7PMEO6D3AUH/