An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.13.x, allowing Intel guest OS users to gain privileges or cause a denial of service because of non-atomic modification of a live EPT PTE. When mapping guest EPT (nested paging) tables, Xen would in some circumstances use a series of non-atomic bitfield writes. Depending on the compiler version and optimisation flags, Xen might expose a dangerous partially written PTE to the hardware, which an attacker might be able to race to exploit. A guest administrator or perhaps even an unprivileged guest user might be able to cause denial of service, data corruption, or privilege escalation. Only systems using Intel CPUs are vulnerable. Systems using AMD CPUs, and Arm systems, are not vulnerable. Only systems using nested paging (hap, aka nested paging, aka in this case Intel EPT) are vulnerable. Only HVM and PVH guests can exploit the vulnerability. The presence and scope of the vulnerability depends on the precise optimisations performed by the compiler used to build Xen. If the compiler generates (a) a single 64-bit write, or (b) a series of read-modify-write operations in the same order as the source code, the hypervisor is not vulnerable. For example, in one test build using GCC 8.3 with normal settings, the compiler generated multiple (unlocked) read-modify-write operations in source-code order, which did not constitute a vulnerability. We have not been able to survey compilers; consequently we cannot say which compiler(s) might produce vu…

Affected: Ubuntu:20.04:LTS: xen

It was discovered that memory contents previously stored in microarchitectural special registers after RDRAND, RDSEED, and SGX EGETKEY read operations on Intel client and Xeon E3 processors may be briefly exposed to processes on the same or different processor cores. A local attacker could use this to expose sensitive information. (CVE-2020-0543)

Julien Grall discovered that Xen incorrectly handled memory barriers on ARM-based systems. An attacker could possibly use this issue to cause a denial of service, obtain sensitive information or escalate privileges. (CVE-2020-11739)

Ilja Van Sprundel discovered that Xen incorrectly handled profiling of guests. An unprivileged attacker could use this issue to obtain sensitive information from other guests, cause a denial of service or possibly gain privileges. (CVE-2020-11740, CVE-2020-11741)

It was discovered that Xen incorrectly handled grant tables. A malicious guest could possibly use this issue to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2020-11742, CVE-2020-11743)

Jan Beulich discovered that Xen incorrectly handled certain code paths. An attacker could possibly use this issue to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2020-15563)

Julien Grall discovered that Xen incorrectly verified memory addresses provided by the guest on ARM-based systems. A malicious guest administrator could possibly use this issue to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2020-15564)

Roger Pau Monné discovered that Xen incorrectly handled caching on x86 Intel systems. An a…