Xen
CVE-2023-34322
HIGH
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A06:2021 - Vulnerable and Outdated Components
ASVS 5.0
V8 - Authorization Privilege drop verification
|
| Impact | CVSS score of 7.8 (HIGH). Attack characteristics: local attack vector, low complexity, low privileges required, no user interaction not required. EPSS exploitation probability: 0.06%. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | Successful exploitation could compromise the high-severity affected system. |
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Alert meAnalysisAIv1 – Mar 28, 2026
For migration as well as to work around kernels unaware of L1TF (see XSA-273), PV guests may be run in shadow paging mode. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.8), this vulnerability is low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
Earlier versions of this analysis (1)
Xen shadow paging privilege escalation.
RemediationAI
No vendor patch is available at time of analysis. Monitor vendor advisories for updates. Apply vendor patches when available. Implement network segmentation and monitoring as interim mitigations.
Affects your stack
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Technical ContextAI · show details
This vulnerability is classified under CWE-273. For migration as well as to work around kernels unaware of L1TF (see XSA-273), PV guests may be run in shadow paging mode. Since Xen itself needs to be mapped when PV guests run, Xen and shadowed PV guests run directly the respective shadow page tables. For 64-bit PV guests this means running on the shadow of the guest root page table. In the course of dealing with shortage of memory in the shadow pool associated with a domain, shadows of page tables may be torn down. This tearing down may include the shadow root page table that the CPU in question is presently running on. While a precaution exists to supposedly prevent the tearing down of the underlying live page table, the time window covered by that precaution isn't large enough. Affected products include: Xen.
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- Exploit and PoC references, threat intelligence from 22 sources
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Severity by source
AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Primary rating from NVD · only source for this CVE.
CVSS VectorNVD
DescriptionCVE.org
For migration as well as to work around kernels unaware of L1TF (see XSA-273), PV guests may be run in shadow paging mode. Since Xen itself needs to be mapped when PV guests run, Xen and shadowed PV guests run directly the respective shadow page tables. For 64-bit PV guests this means running on the shadow of the guest root page table.
In the course of dealing with shortage of memory in the shadow pool associated with a domain, shadows of page tables may be torn down. This tearing down may include the shadow root page table that the CPU in question is presently running on. While a precaution exists to supposedly prevent the tearing down of the underlying live page table, the time window covered by that precaution isn't large enough.
Executive ViewAI
CVE-2023-34322 presents notable security risk rated CVSS 7.8. Exploitation could compromise the security of affected deployments. Organizations should apply vendor updates when available and consider compensating controls in the interim.
Apply vendor patch. If immediate patching is not feasible: (1) Implement network-level access controls to limit exposure; (2) Enable enhanced monitoring and alerting; (3) Apply principle of least privilege.
Threat Intelligence Overview
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
Information disclosure occurs when an application unintentionally exposes sensitive data that aids attackers in reconnaissance or directly compromises security.
Affected Products (CPE)CVE.org
The x86-64 kernel system-call functionality in Xen 4.1.2 and earlier, as used in Citrix XenServer 6.0.2 and earlier and
The Floppy Disk Controller (FDC) in QEMU, as used in Xen 4.5.x and earlier and KVM, allows local guest users to cause a
A statement in the System Programming Guide of the Intel 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer's Manual (SDM) wa
The AdSanity plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to arbitrary file uploads due to missing file type validation in the 'aj
An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.9.x allowing x86 PV guest OS users to cause a denial of service (unbounded recu
An issue (known as XSA-212) was discovered in Xen, with fixes available for 4.8.x, 4.7.x, 4.6.x, 4.5.x, and 4.4.x. Rated
The C+ mode offload emulation in the RTL8139 network card device model in QEMU, as used in Xen 4.5.x and earlier, allows
Xen, when used on a system providing PV backends, allows local guest OS administrators to cause a denial of service (hos
x86 pv: Insufficient care with non-coherent mappings T[his CNA information record relates to multiple CVEs; the text exp
Xen through 4.8.x does not validate memory allocations during certain P2M operations, which allows guest OS users to obt
Xen through 4.8.x mishandles page transfer, which allows guest OS users to obtain privileged host OS access, aka XSA-217
The grant-table feature in Xen through 4.8.x does not ensure sufficient type counts for a GNTMAP_device_map and GNTMAP_h
GitHub PoC
Exploit-DB