CVE-2023-46838

Summary

Transmit requests in Xen's virtual network protocol can consist of multiple parts. While not really useful, except for the initial part any of them may be of zero length, i.e. carry no data at all. Besides a certain initial portion of the to be transferred data, these parts are directly translated into what Linux calls SKB fragments. Such converted request parts can, when for a particular SKB they are all of length zero, lead to a de-reference of NULL in core networking code.

Affected Software

VendorProductVersion RangeStatus
LinuxLinuxconsult Xen advisory XSA-448unknown

Weaknesses

Workarounds

Using a userspace PV network backend (e.g. the qemu based "qnic" backend) will mitigate the problem.

Using a dedicated network driver domain per guest will mitigate the problem.

ADP Enrichment

CVE Program Container

Additional References

CISA ADP Vulnrichment

  • SSVC:
  • Exploitation: none
    • Automatable: yes
    • Technical Impact: partial

References