CVE-2012-5514 Denial of service in n/a

Medium 4.7 Published 13 Dec 2012 Updated 6 Aug 2024

Local guest HVM administrators can cause a denial of service hang in the Xen hypervisor by exploiting improper GFN unlocking logic.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: An administrator
Attackable: Local or same network only
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2012-5514?

CVE-2012-5514 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Xen Xen, published on 13 Dec 2012. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

The guest_physmap_mark_populate_on_demand function in Xen 4.2 and earlier does not properly unlock the subject GFNs when checking if they are in use, which allows local guest HVM administrators to cause a denial of service (hang) via unspecified vectors.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2012-5514?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Xen Xen.

How do I fix CVE-2012-5514?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2012-5514 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2012-5514 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Xen Xen vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2012-5514, GHSA-w353-4w98-xmh3.