Quick answers
- Is CVE-2016-9383 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2016-9383 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2016-9383?
- High severity, with a CVSS score of 8.8, published 23 January 2017.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Citrix Xenserver 6.0.2, 6.2.0, 6.5, 7.0; Xen Project Xen All versions (exposed to 64-bit x86 guests).
- Is there a fix for CVE-2016-9383?
- A patch was published on 2016-11-22: Patch released by Xen Project Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.
- How is CVE-2016-9383 attacked?
- It is attacked with local access, in an operating system.
- Am I affected by CVE-2016-9383?
- Check whether you run Citrix Xenserver or Xen Project Xen at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.
Technical details
A vulnerability exists in Xen's emulation of x86 bit test instructions (BT, BTC, BTR, and BTS) when used with a destination memory operand and a source register. During emulation, Xen incorrectly recalculates the memory address and register operand, discarding high bits of an intermediate expression. This logic error allows a malicious 64-bit guest to cause the hypervisor to perform unintended memory accesses or register updates. An attacker can leverage this to achieve arbitrary memory modification on the host, leading to host crashes (DoS), information disclosure, or full host-level privilege escalation. The issue is primarily exposed to 64-bit x86 guests; on Xen 4.7 and later, it typically requires specific guest privileges or non-default CPU configurations to exploit.
Affected products
- Xen Project Xen All versions (exposed to 64-bit x86 guests)
- Citrix XenServer 6.0.2, 6.2.0, 6.5, 7.0
Timeline
- 2016-11-22: disclosed: Initial public release of XSA-195
- 2016-11-22: patched: Patch released by Xen Project
- 2017-01-23: advisory: NVD publication date