# CVE-2023-34323: xenstored: A transaction conflict can crash C Xenstored

> A transaction conflict in C Xenstored can cause a crash due to an assertion failure when quota accounting becomes temporarily negative.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/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:** 5 Jan 2024
- **Updated:** 4 Nov 2025
- **Also known as:** ALPINE-CVE-2023-34323, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-34323, GHSA-85fq-cwc3-mp4q, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-34323

## What is CVE-2023-34323?

CVE-2023-34323 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Xen Xen, published on 5 Jan 2024. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

When a transaction is committed, C Xenstored will first check
the quota is correct before attempting to commit any nodes.  It would
be possible that accounting is temporarily negative if a node has
been removed outside of the transaction.

Unfortunately, some versions of C Xenstored are assuming that the
quota cannot be negative and are using assert() to confirm it.  This
will lead to C Xenstored crash when tools are built without -DNDEBUG
(this is the default).

Weakness: CWE-476 (NULL Pointer Dereference)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-34323?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Xen Xen.

## How do I fix CVE-2023-34323?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2023-34323 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-34323 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-2023-34323 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2023-34323 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Xen Xen, published on 5 Jan 2024. 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-2023-34323 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-2023-34323/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-34323/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-34323
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-34323
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2023-34323

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-34323/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.