# CVE-2017-15596: Denial of service in n/a

> ARM guest OS users can cause a denial of service by preventing physical CPU usage due to lock mishandling in Xen.

- **Severity:** Medium 6.0 (`CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** An administrator
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 18 Oct 2017
- **Updated:** 5 Aug 2024
- **Also known as:** ALPINE-CVE-2017-15596, DEBIAN-CVE-2017-15596, GHSA-9vx2-2784-8w2r, UBUNTU-CVE-2017-15596

## What is CVE-2017-15596?

CVE-2017-15596 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Xen Xen, published on 18 Oct 2017. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

An issue was discovered in Xen 4.4.x through 4.9.x allowing ARM guest OS users to cause a denial of service (prevent physical CPU usage) because of lock mishandling upon detection of an add-to-physmap error.

Weakness: CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2017-15596?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Xen Xen.

## How do I fix CVE-2017-15596?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2017-15596 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2017-15596 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Xen Xen

- [CVE-2017-10912](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-10912/): Privilege escalation in n/a (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2017-10918](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-10918/): Memory corruption in n/a (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2017-10920](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-10920/): Memory corruption in n/a (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2017-10921](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-10921/): Memory corruption in n/a (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2025-27466](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-27466/): Mutiple vulnerabilities in the Viridian interface (critical 9.8)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2017-15596 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2017-15596 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Xen Xen, published on 18 Oct 2017. 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-2017-15596 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Xen Xen. 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-2017-15596/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-15596/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2017-15596
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2017-15596
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2017-15596

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-15596/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.