Vulnerability · Published Jan 5, 2024 · Assigned by XEN
CVE-2023-46837arm32: The cache may not be properly cleaned/invalidated (take two)
Low 3.3
In plain English
A low-severity memory corruption 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 15% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official description
Arm provides multiple helpers to clean & invalidate the cache for a given region. This is, for instance, used when allocating guest memory to ensure any writes (such as the ones during scrubbing) have reached memory before handing over the page to a guest. Unfortunately, the arithmetics in the helpers can overflow and would then result to skip the cache cleaning/invalidation. Therefore there is no guarantee when all the writes will reach the memory. This undefined behavior was meant to be addressed by XSA-437, but the approach was not sufficient.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alpine:v3.20 | xen | 4.18.0-r2 | ALPINE-CVE-2023-46837 |
| Alpine:v3.21 | xen | 4.18.0-r2 | ALPINE-CVE-2023-46837 |
| Alpine:v3.22 | xen | 4.18.0-r2 | ALPINE-CVE-2023-46837 |
| Alpine:v3.23 | xen | 4.18.0-r2 | ALPINE-CVE-2023-46837 |
| Alpine:v3.24 | xen | 4.18.0-r2 | ALPINE-CVE-2023-46837 |
| Debian:12 | xen | 4.17.3+10-g091466ba55-1~deb12u1 | DEBIAN-CVE-2023-46837 |
| Debian:13 | xen | 4.17.3+10-g091466ba55-1 | DEBIAN-CVE-2023-46837 |
| Debian:14 | xen | 4.17.3+10-g091466ba55-1 | DEBIAN-CVE-2023-46837 |
| Ubuntu:22.04:LTS | xen | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-46837 |
| Ubuntu:24.04:LTS | xen | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-46837 |
| Ubuntu:25.10 | xen | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-46837 |
| Ubuntu:26.04:LTS | xen | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-46837 |
| Ubuntu:26.10 | xen | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-46837 |
Affected products (as reported)
Weakness: CWE-119 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
References
- https://xenbits.xenproject.org/xsa/advisory-447.html
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/XLL6SQ6IKFYXLYWITYZCRV5IBRK5G35R/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/JFVKWYQFRUU3CAS53THTUKXEOUDWI42G/
- http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-447.html