Privilege escalation in Xen on Intel processors

1) Information exposure through microarchitectural state after transient execution

EUVDB-ID: #VU79262

Risk: Medium

CVSSv3.1: 7.6 [CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N/E:U/RL:O/RC:C]

CVE-ID: CVE-2022-40982

CWE-ID: CWE-1342 - Information Exposure through Microarchitectural State after Transient Execution

Exploit availability: No

Description

The vulnerability allows a malicious guest to escalate privileges on the system.

The vulnerability exists due to the way data is shared between threads whereby the AVX GATHER instructions on Intel processors can forward the content of stale vector registers to dependent instructions. A malicious guest can infer data from different contexts on the same core and execute arbitrary code with elevated privileges.

Mitigation

Install updates from vendor's website.

Vulnerable software versions

Xen: All versions

External links

http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-435.html

Q & A

Can this vulnerability be exploited remotely?

Yes. This vulnerability can be exploited by a remote authenticated privileged user via the Internet.

Is there known malware, which exploits this vulnerability?

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