CVE-2020-15564
Publication date 7 July 2020
Last updated 26 August 2025
Ubuntu priority
Description
An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.13.x, allowing Arm guest OS users to cause a hypervisor crash because of a missing alignment check in VCPUOP_register_vcpu_info. The hypercall VCPUOP_register_vcpu_info is used by a guest to register a shared region with the hypervisor. The region will be mapped into Xen address space so it can be directly accessed. On Arm, the region is accessed with instructions that require a specific alignment. Unfortunately, there is no check that the address provided by the guest will be correctly aligned. As a result, a malicious guest could cause a hypervisor crash by passing a misaligned address. A malicious guest administrator may cause a hypervisor crash, resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS). All Xen versions are vulnerable. Only Arm systems are vulnerable. x86 systems are not affected.
Status
| Package | Ubuntu Release | Status |
|---|---|---|
| xen | 25.10 questing |
Not affected
|
| 25.04 plucky |
Not affected
|
|
| 24.04 LTS noble |
Not affected
|
|
| 22.04 LTS jammy |
Not affected
|
|
| 20.04 LTS focal |
Fixed 4.11.3+24-g14b62ab3e5-1ubuntu2.3
|
|
| 18.04 LTS bionic |
Vulnerable
|
|
| 16.04 LTS xenial |
Vulnerable
|
|
| 14.04 LTS trusty | Not in release |
Notes
mdeslaur
hypervisor packages are in universe. For issues in the hypervisor, add appropriate tags to each section, ex: Tags_xen: universe-binary
Severity score breakdown
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Base score |
6.5 · Medium
|
| Attack vector | Local |
| Attack complexity | Low |
| Privileges required | Low |
| User interaction | None |
| Scope | Changed |
| Confidentiality | None |
| Integrity impact | None |
| Availability impact | High |
| Vector | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H |
References
Related Ubuntu Security Notices (USN)
- USN-5617-1
- Xen vulnerabilities
- 19 September 2022