CVE detail

CVE-2020-25596 — CVE-2020-25596

Published 2020-09-23 · Modified 2026-06-17 · Vendor xen · Product xen · Source nvd
MEDIUM
severity
CVSS-derived band
5.5
CVSS v3
0–10 scale
0.0051
EPSS probability
exploitation probability, 30d
41.0%
EPSS percentile
percentile vs all CVEs
NOT LISTED
CISA KEV
known exploited catalog

Description

An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.14.x. x86 PV guest kernels can experience denial of service via SYSENTER. The SYSENTER instruction leaves various state sanitization activities to software. One of Xen's sanitization paths injects a #GP fault, and incorrectly delivers it twice to the guest. This causes the guest kernel to observe a kernel-privilege #GP fault (typically fatal) rather than a user-privilege #GP fault (usually converted into SIGSEGV/etc.). Malicious or buggy userspace can crash the guest kernel, resulting in a VM Denial of Service. All versions of Xen from 3.2 onwards are vulnerable. Only x86 systems are vulnerable. ARM platforms are not vulnerable. Only x86 systems that support the SYSENTER instruction in 64bit mode are vulnerable. This is believed to be Intel, Centaur

Remediation

No vendor-published fix data in our corpus for this CVE. Check the references below or the vendor's PSIRT / security advisories page.

References

cvedb.io · NVD · CISA KEV · FIRST EPSS · vendor advisories (CVE Program List v5). Informational only, no warranty — verify every remediation against the vendor advisory before acting on it. This product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD, CISA, FIRST.org or any vendor named. CVE® is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation.