Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling in Xen

1) Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

EUVDB-ID: #VU49138

Risk: Medium

CVSSv3.1: 5.7 [CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H/E:U/RL:O/RC:C]

CVE-ID: CVE-2020-29567

CWE-ID: CWE-770 - Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

Exploit availability: No

Description

The vulnerability allows a remote non-authenticated attacker to perform a denial of service (DoS) attack.

An issue was discovered in Xen 4.14.x. When moving IRQs between CPUs to distribute the load of IRQ handling, IRQ vectors are dynamically allocated and de-allocated on the relevant CPUs. De-allocation has to happen when certain constraints are met. If these conditions are not met when first checked, the checking CPU may send an interrupt to itself, in the expectation that this IRQ will be delivered only after the condition preventing the cleanup has cleared. For two specific IRQ vectors, this expectation was violated, resulting in a continuous stream of self-interrupts, which renders the CPU effectively unusable. A domain with a passed through PCI device can cause lockup of a physical CPU, resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS) to the entire host. Only x86 systems are vulnerable. Arm systems are not vulnerable. Only guests with physical PCI devices passed through to them can exploit the vulnerability.

Mitigation

Install update from vendor's website.

Vulnerable software versions

Xen: 4.24

External links

http://xenbits.xenproject.org/xsa/advisory-356.html

Q & A

Can this vulnerability be exploited remotely?

Yes. This vulnerability can be exploited by a remote non-authenticated attacker via the Internet.

Is there known malware, which exploits this vulnerability?

No. We are not aware of malware exploiting this vulnerability.