Medium severity · published May 16, 2024
CVE-2023-46842
Unlike 32-bit PV guests, HVM guests may switch freely between 64-bit and other modes
6.5
CVSS
8.5%
EPSS
No
On KEV
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.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Scope
Changed
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)8.5% · higher than 95% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
FE
Fedora · Fedoraproject
38; 40 · source: NVD
XE
Xen · Xen
3.2.0 and later · source: NVD
Affected product
FE
Fedora
Fedoraproject
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