Guest-triggered DoS via unbounded xenstored allocations
Published Nov 1, 2022 · Updated May 6, 2025
Allocation of resources without limits in Xen xenstored allows unprivileged guests to cause denial of service via crafted xenstore requests. Guests can withhold responses, create many watches or nodes, or access many nodes in transactions, causing xenstored to buffer or allocate excessive memory. The attack requires an unprivileged guest and can prevent creation of new guests or configuration changes to running guests.
Summary
What happened
Allocation of resources without limits in Xen xenstored allows unprivileged guests to cause denial of service via crafted xenstore requests. Guests can withhold responses, create many watches or nodes, or access many nodes in transactions, causing xenstored to buffer or allocate excessive memory. The attack requires an unprivileged guest and can prevent creation of new guests or configuration changes to running guests.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2022-42314
- Published
- Nov 1, 2022
- Updated
- May 6, 2025
- Vendor
- Unknown vendor
- Product
- Unknown product
- Classifications
- CWE-770, T1499.002
- Attack vector
- local
- Privileges
- authenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Nov 1, 2022CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- May 6, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
Compare your product and version with the public record. A matching version still requires validation against your environment.
Is a vulnerable build present?
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Affected products and versions are unavailable in this record.
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
No public exploit references are available in this record.
Labels summarize the accepted research assessment. They do not indicate a test against your environment.
Technologies
Your stack
See the directory against your own environment.
Your stack
Check the software in your environment
Book a demo to see how Hinoki identifies affected software and validates exploitability in your environment.
Book a demo