CVE-2018-12893
An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.10.x. One of the fixes in XSA-260 added some safety checks to help prevent Xen livelocking with…
- 6.5MediumCVSS base score
- 0.41%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 65% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.10.x. One of the fixes in XSA-260 added some safety checks to help prevent Xen livelocking with debug exceptions. Unfortunately, due to an oversight, at least one of these safety checks can be triggered by a guest. A malicious PV guest can crash Xen, leading to a Denial of Service. All Xen systems which have applied the XSA-260 fix are vulnerable. Only x86 systems are vulnerable. ARM systems are not vulnerable. Only x86 PV guests can exploit the vulnerability. x86 HVM and PVH guests cannot exploit the vulnerability. An attacker needs to be able to control hardware debugging facilities to exploit the vulnerability, but such permissions are typically available to unprivileged users.
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 | Medium6.5 | CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.41% · top 65% of all CVEs (10 Nov 2026)
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Medium 6.5.
Affected products
n/a
- affected n/a
References
9
- [oss-security] 20180627 Xen Security Advisory 265 (CVE-2018-12893) - x86: #DB exception safety check can be triggered by a guest (opens in a new tab)mailing-listx_refsource_MLISTx_transferred
- DSA-4236 (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_refsource_DEBIANx_transferred
- https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX235748 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_CONFIRMx_transferred
- GLSA-201810-06 (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_refsource_GENTOOx_transferred
- [debian-lts-announce] 20181112 [SECURITY] [DLA 1577-1] xen security update (opens in a new tab)mailing-listx_refsource_MLISTx_transferred
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1590979 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_CONFIRMx_transferred
- http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-265.html (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_CONFIRMx_transferred
- 104572 (opens in a new tab)vdb-entryx_refsource_BIDx_transferred
- 1041202 (opens in a new tab)vdb-entryx_refsource_SECTRACKx_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-2018-4846 (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-2018-12893)Record last updated .