CVE-2024-45818

Deadlock in x86 HVM standard VGA handling

MEDIUM
6.5
CVSS Score
Published: December 19, 2024 at 12:00 PM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 07:54 AM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorXen

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

Description

The hypervisor contains code to accelerate VGA memory accesses for HVM guests, when the (virtual) VGA is in "standard" mode. Locking involved there has an unusual discipline, leaving a lock acquired past the return from the function that acquired it. This behavior results in a problem when emulating an instruction with two memory accesses, both of which touch VGA memory (plus some further constraints which aren't relevant here). When emulating the 2nd access, the lock that is already being held would be attempted to be re-acquired, resulting in a deadlock. This deadlock was already found when the code was first introduced, but was analysed incorrectly and the fix was incomplete. Analysis in light of the new finding cannot find a way to make the existing locking discipline work. In staging, this logic has all been removed because it was discovered to be accidentally disabled since Xen 4.7. Therefore, we are fixing the locking problem by backporting the removal of most of the feature. Note that even with the feature disabled, the lock would still be acquired for any accesses to the VGA MMIO region.

Affected

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

Xen· Xenwordpress-plugin
95%
4.6.0 ≤ v < 4.20.0
Affected range stops below 4.20.0, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Vendor states this is fixed in consult Xen advisory XSA-463 (unknown)

Remediation

No guide yet

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

References (3)

PatchThird Party Advisory
Source: af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2024/11/12/2
PatchVendor Advisory
Source: af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108
http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-463.html

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
HIGH
Integrity
NONE
Availability
NONE
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusANALYZED
CWE
CWE-667

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