CVE-2017-14318

Related Vulnerabilities: CVE-2017-14318  

An issue was discovered in Xen 4.5.x through 4.9.x. The function `__gnttab_cache_flush` handles GNTTABOP_cache_flush grant table operations. It checks to see if the calling domain is the owner of the page that is to be operated on. If it is not, the owner's grant table is checked to see if a grant mapping to the calling domain exists for the page in question. However, the function does not check to see if the owning domain actually has a grant table or not. Some special domains, such as `DOMID_XEN`, `DOMID_IO` and `DOMID_COW` are created without grant tables. Hence, if __gnttab_cache_flush operates on a page owned by these special domains, it will attempt to dereference a NULL pointer in the domain struct.

The MITRE CVE dictionary describes this issue as:

An issue was discovered in Xen 4.5.x through 4.9.x. The function `__gnttab_cache_flush` handles GNTTABOP_cache_flush grant table operations. It checks to see if the calling domain is the owner of the page that is to be operated on. If it is not, the owner's grant table is checked to see if a grant mapping to the calling domain exists for the page in question. However, the function does not check to see if the owning domain actually has a grant table or not. Some special domains, such as `DOMID_XEN`, `DOMID_IO` and `DOMID_COW` are created without grant tables. Hence, if __gnttab_cache_flush operates on a page owned by these special domains, it will attempt to dereference a NULL pointer in the domain struct.

Find out more about CVE-2017-14318 from the MITRE CVE dictionary dictionary and NIST NVD.

CVSS v3 metrics

NOTE: The following CVSS v3 metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.

CVSS3 Base Score 8.5
CVSS3 Base Metrics CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Attack Vector Network
Attack Complexity High
Privileges Required Low
User Interaction None
Scope Changed
Confidentiality High
Integrity Impact High
Availability Impact High

Affected Packages State

Platform Package State
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 xen Will not fix

Acknowledgements

Red Hat would like to thank Matthew Daley for reporting this issue.

External References