CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2021-28705 — Xen Xen security vulnerability

High CVSS 7.8

issues with partially successful P2M updates on x86 T[his CNA information record relates to multiple CVEs; the text explains which aspects/vulnerabilities correspond to which CVE.] x86 HVM and PVH guests may be started in populate-on-demand (PoD) mode, to provide a way for them to later easily have more memory assigned. Guests are permitted to control certain P2M aspects of individual pages via hypercalls. These hypercalls may act on ranges of pages specified via page orders (resulting in a power-of-2 number of pages). In some cases the hypervisor carries out the requests by splitting them into smaller chunks. Error handling in certain PoD cases has been insufficient in that in particular partial success of some operations was not properly accounted for. There are two code paths affected - page removal (CVE-2021-28705) and insertion of new pages (CVE-2021-28709). (We provide one patch which combines the fix to both issues.)

Severity
High
CVSS
7.8 (3.1)
Published
2021-11-24
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
operating-system
Weaknesses
CWE-755

Affected products

  • xen / xen
  • xen / xen / 4.15.0
  • xen / xen / 4.15.1
  • fedoraproject / fedora / 34
  • fedoraproject / fedora / 35
  • debian / debian_linux / 11.0

Showing 6 representative product identities from 8 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

General vulnerability remediation

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Check exposure

  • Confirm the affected component, deployment paths, reachable interfaces, and enabled features from inventories and configuration, without probing production destructively.
  • Compare the advisory's affected conditions with the repository lockfiles, build manifests, artifacts, and runtime inventory.
  • Identify data sensitivity, trust boundaries, and privilege level for every confirmed affected deployment.

Remediate safely

  • Apply a vendor-supported fix or remove the affected component or feature; record the selected change and its source in the repository.
  • Update direct and transitive dependency locks, generated artifacts, deployment manifests, and asset inventories together.
  • Add a regression test for the documented unsafe condition using inert inputs and preserve rollback instructions.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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