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Fencer Vulns
high 8.8

CVE-2017-8905 json

Xen through 4.6.x on 64-bit platforms mishandles a failsafe callback, which might allow PV guest OS users to execute arbitrary code on the…

published 2017-05-11 9 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2017-17845

cvss
8.8
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 36%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Xen through 4.6.x on 64-bit platforms mishandles a failsafe callback, which might allow PV guest OS users to execute arbitrary code on the host OS, aka XSA-215.

Patch / fix

  • xen Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 4.8.0~rc3-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2017-8905

  • xen Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 4.4.2-0ubuntu0.14.04.11
  • xen Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 4.6.5-0ubuntu1.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2017-8905

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • xen SLES for SAP 12 SP1, SLES 12 SP1-LTSS, OpenStack Cloud 6 4.5.5_12-22.18.1
  • xen SLES for SAP 11 SP4, SLES 11 SP4, SLE Software Development Kit 11 SP4 4.4.4_20-60.3
  • xen SLES 11 SP3-LTSS, SLE Point of Sale 11 SP3 4.2.5_21-44.1
  • xen SLES for SAP 12, SLES 12-LTSS 4.4.4_21-22.42.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2017:1812-1SUSE-SU-2017:1795-1SUSE-SU-2017:1770-1SUSE-SU-2017:1715-1

  • xen Alpine 3.3 4.6.3-r7
  • xen Alpine 3.4 4.6.3-r9
  • xen Alpine 3.5 4.7.2-r1

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2017-8905

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-2017-8905 updated cvss 8.5

xen: possible memory corruption via failsafe callback (XSA-215)

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 xen
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”

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

0.42% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 36% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 8.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.8 AV:L/AC:L/Au:S/C:C/I:C/A:C

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.