Recent x86 CPUs offer functionality named Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET). A sub-feature of this are Shadow Stacks (CET-SS). CET-SS is a hardware feature designed to protect against Return Oriented Programming attacks. When enabled, traditional stacks holding both data and return addresses are accompanied by so called "shadow stacks", holding little more than return addresses. Shadow stacks aren't writable by normal instructions, and upon function returns their contents are used to check for possible manipulation of a return address coming from the traditional stack. In particular certain memory accesses need intercepting by Xen. In various cases the necessary emulation involves kind of replaying of the instruction. Such replaying typically involves filling and then invoking of a stub. Such a replayed instruction may raise an exceptions, which is expected and dealt with accordingly. Unfortunately the interaction of both of the above wasn't right: Recovery involves removal of a call frame from the (traditional) stack. The counterpart of this operation for the shadow stack was missing.
This vulnerability carries a MEDIUM severity rating with a CVSS v3.1 score of 6.5, requiring local system access to exploit with relatively low complexity without requiring user interaction requiring only low-level privileges . The vulnerability impacts and availability (service disruption) for affected systems. Impacting 2 products from fedoraproject, from xen organizations running these solutions should prioritize assessment and patching.
Reported in 2024, 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.
2024-03-20T11:15:08.220
2025-11-04T19:16:05.413
Modified
CVSSv3.1: 6.5 (MEDIUM)
| Type | Vendor | Product | Version/Range | Vulnerable? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operating System | fedoraproject | fedora | 40 | Yes |
| Operating System | xen | xen | ≥ 4.14.0 | Yes |
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 fedoraproject'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.