VulnerabilityPublished 5 Jan 2024Updated 3 Jun 2025

CVE-2023-46836: Xen

Affects XenSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 4.7 Medium.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 14:05 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

4.7Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 16% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Attack Vector: Local
Attack Complexity: High
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: High
Integrity: None
Availability: None

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Local: The vulnerable component is not bound to the network stack and the attacker’s path is via read/write/execute capabilities. Either: the attacker exploits the vulnerability by accessing the target system locally (e.g., keyboard, console), or remotely (e.g., SSH); or the attacker relies on User Interaction by another person to perform actions required to exploit the vulnerability (e.g., tricking a legitimate user into opening a malicious document).
Attack Complexity: High: A successful attack depends on conditions beyond the attacker's control. That is, a successful attack cannot be accomplished at will, but requires the attacker to invest in some measurable amount of effort in preparation or execution against the vulnerable component before a successful attack can be expected. For example, a successful attack may require an attacker to: gather knowledge about the environment in which the vulnerable target/component exists; prepare the target environment to improve exploit reliability; or inject themselves into the logical network path between the target and the resource requested by the victim in order to read and/or modify network communications (e.g., a man in the middle attack).
Privileges Required: Low: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide basic user capabilities that could normally affect only settings and files owned by a user. Alternatively, an attacker with Low privileges may have the ability to cause an impact only to non-sensitive resources.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: High: There is total loss of confidentiality, resulting in all resources within the impacted component being divulged to the attacker. Alternatively, access to only some restricted information is obtained, but the disclosed information presents a direct, serious impact.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the impacted component.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 5 Jan 2024
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

AI-suggested

Apply official patches and updates from the Xen Project as soon as they become available to address this IRQ safety issue in the mitigations for BTC/SRSO and Meltdown.
Until patches are available, consider disabling paravirtualized guests or limiting their capabilities to reduce attack surface, especially in multi-tenant environments.
Implement strict access controls and monitoring on guest VM users to prevent unauthorized local access or privilege escalation.
Use CPU vendor-specific mitigations carefully, ensuring that configurations do not leave the system vulnerable due to incomplete or conflicting mitigations.
Employ runtime monitoring and anomaly detection for unusual speculative execution attack patterns or race conditions in hypervisor logs.
Engage with Xen community and security advisories regularly to stay informed about updates or exploit developments related to this vulnerability.
For critical environments, consider additional isolation mechanisms such as hardware-assisted virtualization features or alternative hypervisors until this issue is resolved.

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.

Impact

For European organizations using Xen hypervisor environments, particularly those running paravirtualized guests, this vulnerability poses a risk of confidentiality breaches. Attackers with local access to guest VMs could exploit the race condition to bypass existing mitigations and potentially leak sensitive data from the hypervisor or other guest VMs. This is especially critical for cloud service providers, hosting companies, and enterprises relying on Xen for virtualization, as it could undermine tenant isolation and data privacy. The medium severity and high attack complexity reduce the likelihood of widespread exploitation, but targeted attacks against high-value infrastructure remain a concern. Organizations handling sensitive or regulated data (e.g., financial, healthcare, government) in Europe must consider this vulnerability in their risk assessments. The absence of known exploits suggests a window of opportunity for proactive mitigation before active exploitation occurs.

References

xenbits.xenproject.org/xsa/advisory-446.html (opens in a new tab)

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 4 Jul 2025, 03:54 UTC

Technical details

References

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