Vulnerability Monitor

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CVE-2020-29480


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.


Security Impact Summary

This vulnerability carries a LOW severity rating with a CVSS v3.1 score of 2.3, requiring local system access to exploit with relatively low complexity without requiring user interaction . The vulnerability impacts limited data confidentiality, for affected systems. Impacting 3 products from xen, from debian, from fedoraproject organizations running these solutions should prioritize assessment and patching.

Historical Context

Reported in 2020, this vulnerability emerged during an era marked by increased sophistication in supply chain attacks, cloud infrastructure vulnerabilities, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) security challenges. Security practices during this period emphasized zero-trust architectures, container security, and API protection.


Published

2020-12-15T18:15:15.007

Last Modified

2024-11-21T05:24:04.470

Status

Modified

Source

[email protected]

Severity

CVSSv3.1: 2.3 (LOW)

CVSSv2 Vector

AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N

  • Access Vector: LOCAL
  • Access Complexity: LOW
  • Authentication: NONE
  • Confidentiality Impact: PARTIAL
  • Integrity Impact: NONE
  • Availability Impact: NONE
Exploitability Score

3.9

Impact Score

2.9

Weaknesses
  • Type: Primary
    CWE-862

Affected Vendors & Products
Type Vendor Product Version/Range Vulnerable?
Operating System xen xen ≤ 4.14.0 Yes
Operating System debian debian_linux 10.0 Yes
Operating System fedoraproject fedora 32 Yes
Operating System fedoraproject fedora 33 Yes

References

How SecUtils Interprets This CVE

SecUtils normalizes and enriches National Vulnerability Database (NVD) records by standardizing vendor and product identifiers, aggregating vulnerability metadata from both NVD and MITRE sources, and providing structured context for security teams. For xen's affected products, we extract Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) data, Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) classifications, CVSS severity metrics, and reference data to enable rapid vulnerability prioritization and asset correlation. This record contains no exploit code, proof-of-concept instructions, or attack methodologies—only defensive intelligence necessary for patch management, risk assessment, and security operations.