CVE-2013-1917

Related Vulnerabilities: CVE-2013-1917  

Xen 3.1 through 4.x, when running 64-bit hosts on Intel CPUs, does not clear the NT flag when using an IRET after a SYSENTER instruction, which allows PV guest users to cause a denial of service (hypervisor crash) by triggering a #GP fault, which is not properly handled by another IRET instruction.

The MITRE CVE dictionary describes this issue as:

Xen 3.1 through 4.x, when running 64-bit hosts on Intel CPUs, does not clear the NT flag when using an IRET after a SYSENTER instruction, which allows PV guest users to cause a denial of service (hypervisor crash) by triggering a #GP fault, which is not properly handled by another IRET instruction.

Find out more about CVE-2013-1917 from the MITRE CVE dictionary dictionary and NIST NVD.

Statement

Not vulnerable.

This issue did not affect the versions of the kernel-xen package as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 as we did not have support for sysenter for 64bit PV guests running on the Xen hypervisor (introduced in upstream changeset 16207:aeebd173c3fa).

This issue did not affect the versions of the Linux kernel as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and Red Hat Enterprise MRG as we did not have support for Xen hypervisor.

CVSS v2 metrics

NOTE: The following CVSS v2 metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.

Base Score 5.7
Base Metrics AV:A/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C
Access Vector Adjacent Network
Access Complexity Medium
Authentication None
Confidentiality Impact None
Integrity Impact None
Availability Impact Complete

Find out more about Red Hat support for the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).

Affected Packages State

Platform Package State
Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2 realtime-kernel Not affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 kernel Not affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 kernel-xen Not affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 kernel Not affected

Acknowledgements

Red Hat would like to thank the Xen for reporting this issue.