CVE-2023-46838Linux: netback processing of zero-length transmit fragment
- 7.5HighCVSS base score
- 1.2%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 32% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
Transmit requests in Xen's virtual network protocol can consist of multiple parts. While not really useful, except for the initial part any of them may be of zero length, i.e. carry no data at all. Besides a certain initial portion of the to be transferred data, these parts are directly translated into what Linux calls SKB fragments. Such converted request parts can, when for a particular SKB they are all of length zero, lead to a de-reference of NULL in core networking code.
Timeline
ID reserved
By XEN
- 3 months later
· 3 months later
Published
- 22 months later
· 22 months 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| CISA-ADPADP (enrichment) | 3.1 | High7.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H |
| NVDNVD · Modified | 3.1 | High7.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 1.2% · top 32% of all CVEs (13 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 7.5.
Affected products
What to do
Workaround: Using a userspace PV network backend (e.g. the qemu based "qnic" backend) will mitigate the problem. Using a dedicated network driver domain per guest will mitigate the problem.
References
References6
- https://xenbits.xenproject.org/xsa/advisory-448.html (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/ZFYW6R64GPLUOXSQBJI3JBUX3HGLAYPP/ (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/RGEKT4DKSDXDS34EL7M4UVJMMPH7Z3ZZ/ (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2024/06/msg00016.html (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2024/06/msg00020.html (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-448.html (opens in a new tab)
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-2023-51004 (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-2023-46838)Record last updated .