CVE-2015-7972 Denial of service in n/a
Local HVM guest users can crash the guest via memory pressure due to improper balloon size calculation in Xen's PoD system.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2015-7972?
CVE-2015-7972 is a low-severity denial of service vulnerability in Xen Xen, published on 30 Oct 2015. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
The (1) libxl_set_memory_target function in tools/libxl/libxl.c and (2) libxl__build_post function in tools/libxl/libxl_dom.c in Xen 3.4.x through 4.6.x do not properly calculate the balloon size when using the populate-on-demand (PoD) system, which allows local HVM guest users to cause a denial of service (guest crash) via unspecified vectors related to "heavy memory pressure."
Weakness: CWE-399
Which versions are affected by CVE-2015-7972?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Xen Xen.
How do I fix CVE-2015-7972?
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-2015-7972 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2015-7972 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Xen Xen
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2015-7972, GHSA-4pv8-hfx7-rfh8, UBUNTU-CVE-2015-7972.