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Vigil@nce - Xen: privilege escalation via 64-bit PV Migration

October 2013 by Vigil@nce

This bulletin was written by Vigil@nce : http://vigilance.fr/offer

SYNTHESIS OF THE VULNERABILITY

An attacker located in a 64 bit PV system which is migrated can
access to Xen memory, in order to escalate his privileges.

Impacted products: Unix (platform)

Severity: 2/4

Creation date: 30/09/2013

DESCRIPTION OF THE VULNERABILITY

The "Live Migration" feature of Xen is used to move a system from
one computer to another, without stopping it.

However, during this operation, a 64 bit PV guest can use
hypercalls to control the L4 cache memory of hosts with more than
5 TBytes of memory.

An attacker located in a 64 bit PV system which is migrated can
therefore access to Xen memory, in order to escalate his
privileges.

ACCESS TO THE COMPLETE VIGIL@NCE BULLETIN

See previous articles