# CVE-2018-12893: Denial of service in n/a

> A malicious PV guest can crash the Xen hypervisor, causing a denial of service on x86 systems.

- **Severity:** Medium 6.5 (`CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **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:** Yes
- **Published:** 2 Jul 2018
- **Updated:** 5 Aug 2024
- **Also known as:** ALPINE-CVE-2018-12893, DEBIAN-CVE-2018-12893, GHSA-7589-4cgq-4p68, UBUNTU-CVE-2018-12893

## What is CVE-2018-12893?

CVE-2018-12893 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 2 Jul 2018. 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 through 4.10.x. One of the fixes in XSA-260 added some safety checks to help prevent Xen livelocking with debug exceptions. Unfortunately, due to an oversight, at least one of these safety checks can be triggered by a guest. A malicious PV guest can crash Xen, leading to a Denial of Service. All Xen systems which have applied the XSA-260 fix are vulnerable. Only x86 systems are vulnerable. ARM systems are not vulnerable. Only x86 PV guests can exploit the vulnerability. x86 HVM and PVH guests cannot exploit the vulnerability. An attacker needs to be able to control hardware debugging facilities to exploit the vulnerability, but such permissions are typically available to unprivileged users.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-12893?

It affects 2 products.


Products: Debian Debian Linux, Xen Xen.

## How do I fix CVE-2018-12893?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2018-12893 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-12893 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Debian Debian Linux

- [CVE-2015-3306](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2015-3306/): ProFTPD Improper Access Control (critical 10.0, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2025-49113](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-49113/): RoundCube Webmail Deserialization of Untrusted Data (critical 9.9, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2026-24061](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-24061/): GNU InetUtils Argument Injection (critical 9.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2025-39682](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-39682/): Linux Kernel Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions (critical 9.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2024-9680](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-9680/): Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free (critical 9.8, exploited in the wild)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2018-12893 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2018-12893 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 2 Jul 2018. 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-2018-12893 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Debian Debian Linux. 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-2018-12893/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-12893/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2018-12893
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2018-12893
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2018-12893

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-12893/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.