CVE-2018-12892
An issue was discovered in Xen 4.7 through 4.10.x. libxl fails to pass the readonly flag to qemu when setting up a SCSI disk, due to what…
- 9.9CriticalCVSS base score
- 2.5%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 15% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
An issue was discovered in Xen 4.7 through 4.10.x. libxl fails to pass the readonly flag to qemu when setting up a SCSI disk, due to what was probably an erroneous merge conflict resolution. Malicious guest administrators or (in some situations) users may be able to write to supposedly read-only disk images. Only emulated SCSI disks (specified as "sd" in the libxl disk configuration, or an equivalent) are affected. IDE disks ("hd") are not affected (because attempts to make them readonly are rejected). Additionally, CDROM devices (that is, devices specified to be presented to the guest as CDROMs, regardless of the nature of the backing storage on the host) are not affected; they are always read only. Only systems using qemu-xen (rather than qemu-xen-traditional) as the device model version are vulnerable. Only systems using libxl or libxl-based toolstacks are vulnerable. (This includes xl, and libvirt with the libxl driver.) The vulnerability is present in Xen versions 4.7 and later. (In earlier versions, provided that the patch for XSA-142 has been applied, attempts to create read only disks are rejected.) If the host and guest together usually support PVHVM, the issue is exploitable only if the malicious guest administrator has control of the guest kernel or guest kernel command line.
Timeline
ID reserved
By mitre
- 6 days later
· 6 days later
Published
- 6 years later
· 6 years later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVDNVD · Modified | 3.0 | Critical9.9 | CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 2.5% · top 15% of all CVEs (10 Nov 2026)
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Critical 9.9.
Affected products
n/a
- affected n/a
References
6
- DSA-4236 (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_refsource_DEBIANx_transferred
- GLSA-201810-06 (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_refsource_GENTOOx_transferred
- 104571 (opens in a new tab)vdb-entryx_refsource_BIDx_transferred
- http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-266.html (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_CONFIRMx_transferred
- 1041203 (opens in a new tab)vdb-entryx_refsource_SECTRACKx_transferred
- [oss-security] 20180627 Xen Security Advisory 266 (CVE-2018-12892) - libxl fails to honour readonly flag on HVM emulated SCSI disks (opens in a new tab)mailing-listx_refsource_MLISTx_transferred
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2018-4845 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2018-12892)Record last updated .