CVE-2021-28697 Race condition in xen

High 7.8 Published Updated

A race condition in Xen allows guests to retain access to deallocated grant table pages, potentially leading to information disclosure or privilege escalation.

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-2021-28697?

CVE-2021-28697 is a high-severity vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 27 Aug 2021. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

grant table v2 status pages may remain accessible after de-allocation Guest get permitted access to certain Xen-owned pages of memory. The majority of such pages remain allocated / associated with a guest for its entire lifetime. Grant table v2 status pages, however, get de-allocated when a guest switched (back) from v2 to v1. The freeing of such pages requires that the hypervisor know where in the guest these pages were mapped. The hypervisor tracks only one use within guest space, but racing requests from the guest to insert mappings of these pages may result in any of them to become mapped in multiple locations. Upon switching back from v2 to v1, the guest would then retain access to a page that was freed and perhaps re-used for other purposes.

Weakness: CWE-362

Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-28697?

It affects 3 products.

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

How do I fix CVE-2021-28697?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2021-28697 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-28697 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Debian Debian Linux vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as ALPINE-CVE-2021-28697, DEBIAN-CVE-2021-28697, GHSA-2h72-2hx7-mmcq, UBUNTU-CVE-2021-28697.

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