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Fencer Vulns
medium 6.8

CVE-2019-18424 json

An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.12.x allowing attackers to gain host OS privileges via DMA in a situation where an untrusted domai…

published 2019-10-31 7 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2019-8193

cvss
6.8
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.5%
EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 42%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.12.x allowing attackers to gain host OS privileges via DMA in a situation where an untrusted domain has access to a physical device. This occurs because passed through PCI devices may corrupt host memory after deassignment. When a PCI device is assigned to an untrusted domain, it is possible for that domain to program the device to DMA to an arbitrary address. The IOMMU is used to protect the host from malicious DMA by making sure that the device addresses can only target memory assigned to the guest. However, when the guest domain is torn down, or the device is deassigned, the device is assigned back to dom0, thus allowing any in-flight DMA to potentially target critical host data. An untrusted domain with access to a physical device can DMA into host memory, leading to privilege escalation. Only systems where guests are given direct access to physical devices capable of DMA (PCI pass-through) are vulnerable. Systems which do not use PCI pass-through are not vulnerable.

Patch / fix

  • xen Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 4.11.3+24-g14b62ab3e5-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2019-18424

  • xen SLES for SAP 12 SP2, SLES 12 SP2-LTSS, SLES 12 SP2-BCL +1 more 4.7.6_06-43.59.1
  • xen SLES for SAP 12 SP4, SLES 12 SP4, SLED 12 SP4 +1 more 4.11.3_02-2.20.1
  • xen SLES for SAP 12 SP3, SLES 12 SP3-LTSS, SLES 12 SP3-BCL +4 more 4.9.4_06-3.59.1
  • xen SLES for SAP 12 SP4, SLES 12 SP4, SLED 12 SP4 +1 more 4.11.2_04-2.17.1
  • xen SLE Module for Server Applications 15 SP1, SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP1 4.12.1_04-3.6.1
  • xen SLE Module for Server Applications 15, SLE Module for Basesystem 15 4.10.4_06-3.25.1
  • xen SLES 11 SP4-LTSS 4.4.4_42-61.52.1
  • xen SLES for SAP 12 SP1, SLES 12 SP1-LTSS 4.5.5_28-22.64.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2020:14444-1SUSE-SU-2020:0388-1SUSE-SU-2020:0334-1SUSE-SU-2019:3310-1SUSE-SU-2019:3297-1SUSE-SU-2019:2962-1

  • xen openSUSE Leap 15.0 4.10.4_06-lp150.2.25.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2019:2506-1

  • xen Alpine 3.10 4.12.1-r1
  • xen Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +11 more 4.13.0-r0
  • xen Alpine 3.8 4.10.4-r1
  • xen Alpine 3.9 4.11.2-r1

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2019-18424

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2019-18424 updated cvss 7.6

xen: passed through PCI devices may corrupt host memory after deassignment leading to privilege escalation

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 kernel-xen
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.50% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 42% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 6.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:P/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.9 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-78 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.