Vulnerability · Published Jan 5, 2024 · Assigned by XEN
CVE-2023-34322top-level shadow reference dropped too early for 64-bit PV guests
High 7.8
In plain English
A high-severity security flaw in Xen from Xen. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 13% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official description
For migration as well as to work around kernels unaware of L1TF (see XSA-273), PV guests may be run in shadow paging mode. Since Xen itself needs to be mapped when PV guests run, Xen and shadowed PV guests run directly the respective shadow page tables. For 64-bit PV guests this means running on the shadow of the guest root page table. In the course of dealing with shortage of memory in the shadow pool associated with a domain, shadows of page tables may be torn down. This tearing down may include the shadow root page table that the CPU in question is presently running on. While a precaution exists to supposedly prevent the tearing down of the underlying live page table, the time window covered by that precaution isn't large enough.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alpine:v3.20 | xen | 4.17.2-r1 | ALPINE-CVE-2023-34322 |
| Alpine:v3.21 | xen | 4.17.2-r1 | ALPINE-CVE-2023-34322 |
| Alpine:v3.22 | xen | 4.17.2-r1 | ALPINE-CVE-2023-34322 |
| Alpine:v3.23 | xen | 4.17.2-r1 | ALPINE-CVE-2023-34322 |
| Alpine:v3.24 | xen | 4.17.2-r1 | ALPINE-CVE-2023-34322 |
| Debian:12 | xen | 4.17.2+76-ge1f9cb16e2-1~deb12u1 | DEBIAN-CVE-2023-34322 |
| Debian:13 | xen | 4.17.2+55-g0b56bed864-1 | DEBIAN-CVE-2023-34322 |
| Debian:14 | xen | 4.17.2+55-g0b56bed864-1 | DEBIAN-CVE-2023-34322 |
| Ubuntu:22.04:LTS | xen | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-34322 |
| Ubuntu:24.04:LTS | xen | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-34322 |
| Ubuntu:25.10 | xen | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-34322 |
| Ubuntu:26.04:LTS | xen | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-34322 |
| Ubuntu:26.10 | xen | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-34322 |
Affected products (as reported)
Weakness: CWE-273 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H