CVE-2012-0218 — kernel: xen: guest denial of service on syscall/sysenter exception generation

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LOW

kernel: xen: guest denial of service on syscall/sysenter exception generation

Published Dec 3, 2012

1.9

LOW

CVSS 2.0

EPSS 0.40%

Description

Xen 3.4, 4.0, and 4.1, when the guest OS has not registered a handler for a syscall or sysenter instruction, does not properly clear a flag for exception injection when injecting a General Protection Fault, which allows local PV guest OS users to cause a denial of service (guest crash) by later triggering an exception that would normally be handled within Xen.

Affected products

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

kernel

Not affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

kernel-xen

Not affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

kernel

Not affected
Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2

realtime-kernel

Not affected

Product	Package	State	Advisory
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5	kernel	Not affected	n/a
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5	kernel-xen	Not affected	n/a
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6	kernel	Not affected	n/a
Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2	realtime-kernel	Not affected	n/a

Remediation

Red Hat statement

Not vulnerable. This issue did not affect the versions of the kernel-xen package as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 as we did not have support for sysenter and compat (32bit) version of syscall instructions for PV guests running on the Xen hypervisor (introduced in upstream changeset 16207:aeebd173c3fa). This issue did not affect the versions of the Linux kernel as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and Red Hat Enterprise MRG as we did not have support for Xen hypervisor.

Metrics

0.40% 0.00397

Estimated probability of exploitation in the wild in the next 30 days (FIRST EPSS). As of Oct 1, 2026.

EPSS probability 0.00397

Score over time

2022–2026

EPSS v2
EPSS v3
EPSS v4
EPSS v5

Percentile over time

EPSS v2
EPSS v3
EPSS v4
EPSS v5

Table of values (10 key points)

Flat stretches are collapsed; showing up to 120 newest points.

Date	Score	Percentile	Model
Oct 1, 2026	0.40% (0.00397)	31.43th	v5 (v2026.06.15)
Jun 15, 2026	0.40% (0.00397)	31.20th	v5 (v2026.06.15)
Mar 17, 2025	0.06% (0.00063)	16.97th	v4 (v2025.03.14)
Dec 12, 2024	0.06% (0.00059)	26.93th	v3 (v2023.03.01)
May 25, 2024	0.06% (0.00059)	24.81th	v3 (v2023.03.01)
Mar 7, 2023	0.06% (0.00059)	22.80th	v3 (v2023.03.01)
Mar 6, 2023	0.95% (0.00950)	32.28th	v2 (v2022.01.01)
Sep 10, 2022	0.95% (0.00950)	30.63th	v2 (v2022.01.01)
Apr 1, 2022	0.95% (0.00950)	28.61th	v2 (v2022.01.01)
Feb 4, 2022	0.95% (0.00950)	13.46th	v2 (v2022.01.01)

Weaknesses (0)

No CWE recorded.

References (8)

http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-announce/2012-06/msg00003.html
mailing-listx_refsource_MLISTPatchVendor Advisory
http://secunia.com/advisories/55082
third-party-advisoryx_refsource_SECUNIA
http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-201309-24.xml
vendor-advisoryx_refsource_GENTOO
http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2501
vendor-advisoryx_refsource_DEBIAN
https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2012-0218
Vendor Advisory
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=813908
Issue Tracking
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2012-0218
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2012-0218

Link	Providers	Tags
http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-announce/2012-06/msg00003.html		mailing-listx_refsource_MLISTPatchVendor Advisory
http://secunia.com/advisories/55082		third-party-advisoryx_refsource_SECUNIA
http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-201309-24.xml		vendor-advisoryx_refsource_GENTOO
http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2501		vendor-advisoryx_refsource_DEBIAN
https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2012-0218		Vendor Advisory
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=813908		Issue Tracking
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2012-0218
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2012-0218