# CVE-2012-3516: Privilege escalation in n/a

> Local guest administrators can crash the host or gain privileges via crafted grant references in the Xen hypervisor.

- **Severity:** Medium 6.9 (`AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** An administrator
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 23 Nov 2012
- **Updated:** 6 Aug 2024
- **Also known as:** GHSA-rhpw-vvc9-379j

## What is CVE-2012-3516?

CVE-2012-3516 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Citrix Xenserver, published on 23 Nov 2012. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

The GNTTABOP_swap_grant_ref sub-operation in the grant table hypercall in Xen 4.2 and Citrix XenServer 6.0.2 allows local guest kernels or administrators to cause a denial of service (host crash) and possibly gain privileges via a crafted grant reference that triggers a write to an arbitrary hypervisor memory location.

Weakness: CWE-264

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2012-3516?

It affects 2 products.


Products: Citrix Xenserver, Xen Xen.

## How do I fix CVE-2012-3516?

No fix has been published for CVE-2012-3516 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2012-3516 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2012-3516 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Citrix Xenserver

- [CVE-2014-4947](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2014-4947/): Memory corruption in n/a (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2018-14007](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-14007/): Path traversal in n/a (critical 9.8)
- [CVE-2015-7705](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2015-7705/): Denial of service in n/a (critical 9.8)
- [CVE-2016-5302](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2016-5302/): Auth bypass in n/a (critical 9.8)
- [CVE-2017-12134](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-12134/): Memory corruption in n/a (high 8.8)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2012-3516 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2012-3516 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Citrix Xenserver, published on 23 Nov 2012. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2012-3516 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Citrix Xenserver. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2012-3516/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2012-3516/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2012-3516
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2012-3516
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2012-3516

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2012-3516/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.