CVE-2023-46841

x86: shadow stack vs exceptions from emulation stubs

MEDIUM
6.5
CVSS Score
Published: March 20, 2024 at 10:40 AM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 06:31 AM UTC
2 products affected across 2 vendorsFedoraXen

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Severity
MEDIUM6.5
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.3%
SSVC
No known exploit

Description

Recent x86 CPUs offer functionality named Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET). A sub-feature of this are Shadow Stacks (CET-SS). CET-SS is a hardware feature designed to protect against Return Oriented Programming attacks. When enabled, traditional stacks holding both data and return addresses are accompanied by so called "shadow stacks", holding little more than return addresses. Shadow stacks aren't writable by normal instructions, and upon function returns their contents are used to check for possible manipulation of a return address coming from the traditional stack. In particular certain memory accesses need intercepting by Xen. In various cases the necessary emulation involves kind of replaying of the instruction. Such replaying typically involves filling and then invoking of a stub. Such a replayed instruction may raise an exceptions, which is expected and dealt with accordingly. Unfortunately the interaction of both of the above wasn't right: Recovery involves removal of a call frame from the (traditional) stack. The counterpart of this operation for the shadow stack was missing.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

Xen· Xenwordpress-plugin
95%
v ≥ 4.14.0
Vendor states this is fixed in consult Xen advisory XSA-451 (unknown)

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet. What the record does show:

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCNo known exploitNot automatablePartial impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

6.5MEDIUMCISA-ADP
Attack Vector
LOCAL
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
LOW
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
CHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
NONE
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusMODIFIED
CWE
NVD-CWE-Other

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