# CVE-2019-18422: Privilege escalation in n/a

> A malicious ARM guest can cause denial of service or privilege escalation in Xen by exploiting erroneous interrupt unmasking in exception handlers.

- **Severity:** High 8.8 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Any signed-in user
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 31 Oct 2019
- **Updated:** 5 Aug 2024
- **Also known as:** ALPINE-CVE-2019-18422, DEBIAN-CVE-2019-18422, GHSA-4rjw-rr87-jjgv, UBUNTU-CVE-2019-18422

## What is CVE-2019-18422?

CVE-2019-18422 is a high-severity vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 31 Oct 2019. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.12.x allowing ARM guest OS users to cause a denial of service or gain privileges by leveraging the erroneous enabling of interrupts. Interrupts are unconditionally unmasked in exception handlers. When an exception occurs on an ARM system which is handled without changing processor level, some interrupts are unconditionally enabled during exception entry. So exceptions which occur when interrupts are masked will effectively unmask the interrupts. A malicious guest might contrive to arrange for critical Xen code to run with interrupts erroneously enabled. This could lead to data corruption, denial of service, or possibly even privilege escalation. However a precise attack technique has not been identified.

Weakness: CWE-732 (Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2019-18422?

It affects 3 products.


Products: Debian Debian Linux, Fedoraproject Fedora, Xen Xen.

## How do I fix CVE-2019-18422?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2019-18422 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2019-18422 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-2019-18422 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2019-18422 is a high-severity vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 31 Oct 2019. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2019-18422 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-2019-18422/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2019-18422/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2019-18422
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2019-18422
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2019-18422

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2019-18422/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.