VULNERABILITY INTELLIGENCE

CVE-2023-46836

CVSS score4.7 MEDIUM
EPSS probability0.25%
CISA KEVNot currently listed
Published2024-01-05
Last modified2026-06-17
CVSS vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Description

The fixes for XSA-422 (Branch Type Confusion) and XSA-434 (Speculative Return Stack Overflow) are not IRQ-safe. It was believed that the mitigations always operated in contexts with IRQs disabled. However, the original XSA-254 fix for Meltdown (XPTI) deliberately left interrupts enabled on two entry paths; one unconditionally, and one conditionally on whether XPTI was active. As BTC/SRSO and Meltdown affect different CPU vendors, the mitigations are not active together by default. Therefore, there is a race condition whereby a malicious PV guest can bypass BTC/SRSO protections and launch a BTC/SRSO attack against Xen.

Weakness classification

  • nvd@nist.gov: NVD-CWE-noinfo

Primary references