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NOTICE UPDATE

NIST has updated the NVD program announcement page with additional information regarding recent concerns and the temporary delays in enrichment efforts.

CVE-2021-28689 Detail

Description

x86: Speculative vulnerabilities with bare (non-shim) 32-bit PV guests 32-bit x86 PV guest kernels run in ring 1. At the time when Xen was developed, this area of the i386 architecture was rarely used, which is why Xen was able to use it to implement paravirtualisation, Xen's novel approach to virtualization. In AMD64, Xen had to use a different implementation approach, so Xen does not use ring 1 to support 64-bit guests. With the focus now being on 64-bit systems, and the availability of explicit hardware support for virtualization, fixing speculation issues in ring 1 is not a priority for processor companies. Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation (IBRS) is an architectural x86 extension put together to combat speculative execution sidechannel attacks, including Spectre v2. It was retrofitted in microcode to existing CPUs. For more details on Spectre v2, see: http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-254.html However, IBRS does not architecturally protect ring 0 from predictions learnt in ring 1. For more details, see: https://software.intel.com/security-software-guidance/deep-dives/deep-dive-indirect-branch-restricted-speculation Similar situations may exist with other mitigations for other kinds of speculative execution attacks. The situation is quite likely to be similar for speculative execution attacks which have yet to be discovered, disclosed, or mitigated.


Severity



CVSS 3.x Severity and Metrics:

NIST CVSS score
NIST: NVD
Base Score:  5.5 MEDIUM
Vector:  CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N


NVD Analysts use publicly available information to associate vector strings and CVSS scores. We also display any CVSS information provided within the CVE List from the CNA.

Note: NVD Analysts have published a CVSS score for this CVE based on publicly available information at the time of analysis. The CNA has not provided a score within the CVE List.

References to Advisories, Solutions, and Tools

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Hyperlink Resource
https://xenbits.xenproject.org/xsa/advisory-370.txt Vendor Advisory 

Weakness Enumeration

CWE-ID CWE Name Source
CWE-212 Improper Removal of Sensitive Information Before Storage or Transfer cwe source acceptance level NIST  

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Change History

2 change records found show changes

Quick Info

CVE Dictionary Entry:
CVE-2021-28689
NVD Published Date:
06/11/2021
NVD Last Modified:
08/08/2023
Source:
Xen Project