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Fencer Vulns
low 2.3

CVE-2020-29480 json

An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.14.x.

published 2020-12-15 5 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2020-21848

cvss
2.3
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 24%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.14.x. Neither xenstore implementation does any permission checks when reporting a xenstore watch event. A guest administrator can watch the root xenstored node, which will cause notifications for every created, modified, and deleted key. A guest administrator can also use the special watches, which will cause a notification every time a domain is created and destroyed. Data may include: number, type, and domids of other VMs; existence and domids of driver domains; numbers of virtual interfaces, block devices, vcpus; existence of virtual framebuffers and their backend style (e.g., existence of VNC service); Xen VM UUIDs for other domains; timing information about domain creation and device setup; and some hints at the backend provisioning of VMs and their devices. The watch events do not contain values stored in xenstore, only key names. A guest administrator can observe non-sensitive domain and device lifecycle events relating to other guests. This information allows some insight into overall system configuration (including the number and general nature of other guests), and configuration of other guests (including the number and general nature of other guests' devices). This information might be commercially interesting or might make other attacks easier. There is not believed to be exposure of sensitive data. Specifically, there is no exposure of VNC passwords, port numbers, pathnames in host and guest filesystems, cryptographic keys, or within-guest data.

Patch / fix

  • xen Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 4.14.0+88-g1d1d1f5391-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2020-29480

  • xen SLES for SAP 12 SP3, SLES 12 SP3-LTSS, SLES 12 SP3-BCL +4 more 4.9.4_16-3.80.1
  • xen SLES for SAP 15, SLE High Performance Computing 15-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15-ESPOS 4.10.4_24-3.53.1
  • xen SLE Module for Server Applications 15 SP2, SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP2 4.13.2_06-3.22.1
  • xen SLES for SAP 12 SP4, SLES 12 SP4-LTSS, OpenStack Cloud Crowbar 9 +1 more 4.11.4_16-2.48.1
  • xen SLES for SAP 12 SP2, SLES 12 SP2-LTSS, SLES 12 SP2-BCL +1 more 4.7.6_14-43.73.1
  • xen SLE Module for Server Applications 15 SP1, SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP1 4.12.4_06-3.40.1
  • xen SLES for SAP 12 SP5, SLES 12 SP5, SLE Software Development Kit 12 SP5 4.12.4_06-3.36.1
  • xen SLES 11 SP4-LTSS 4.4.4_48-61.61.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2020:3945-1SUSE-SU-2020:3916-1SUSE-SU-2020:3915-1SUSE-SU-2020:3914-1SUSE-SU-2020:3913-1SUSE-SU-2020:3881-1

  • xen openSUSE Tumbleweed 4.15.1_01-1.2
  • xen openSUSE Leap 15.2 4.13.2_06-lp152.2.21.1
  • xen openSUSE Leap 15.1 4.12.4_06-lp151.2.36.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:11520-1openSUSE-SU-2020:2331-1openSUSE-SU-2020:2313-1

  • xen Alpine 3.12, Alpine 3.11 4.13.2-r3
  • xen Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +9 more 4.14.1-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2020-29480

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-2020-29480 updated cvss 4.0

xen: xenstore watch notifications lacking permission checks (XSA-115)

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

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

0.31% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 24% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 2.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
NVD 2.0 2.1 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N

Classification

Weakness

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.