Skip to content
Heist/ feed
Back to feed
MediumFix available

xen — security advisory

Type: advisorySources: OSVAdvisory ID: DEBIAN-CVE-2020-29482

An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.14.x. A guest may access xenstore paths via absolute paths containing a full pathname, or via a relative path, which implicitly includes /local/domain/$DOMID for their own domain id. Management tools must access paths in guests' namespaces, necessarily using absolute paths. oxenstored imposes a pathname limit that is applied solely to the relative or absolute path specified by the client. Therefore, a guest can create paths in its own namespace which are too long for management tools to access. Depending on the toolstack in use, a malicious guest administrator might cause some management tools and debugging operations to fail. For example, a guest administrator can cause "xenstore-ls -r" to fail. However, a guest administrator cannot prevent the host administrator from tearing down the domain. All systems using oxenstored are vulnerable. Building and using oxenstored is the default in the upstream Xen distribution, if the Ocaml compiler is available. Systems using C xenstored are not vulnerable.

Products
xen
Affected versions
Not specified
Fixed versions
4.14.0+88-g1d1d1f5391-1
CVEs
CVE-2020-29482
Confirmed fixed CVEs
Not specified
Updated in this feed
1 Nov 2026, 13:50 UTC · Revision 1

Source evidence

DEBIAN-CVE-2020-29482

core-osv · Original source

Published 15 Dec 2020, 18:15 UTC

An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.14.x. A guest may access xenstore paths via absolute paths containing a full pathname, or via a relative path, which implicitly includes /local/domain/$DOMID for their own domain id. Management tools must access paths in guests' namespaces, necessarily using absolute paths. oxenstored imposes a pathname limit that is applied solely to the relative or absolute path specified by the client. Therefore, a guest can create paths in its own namespace which are too long for management tools to access. Depending on the toolstack in use, a malicious guest administrator might cause some management tools and debugging operations to fail. For example, a guest administrator can cause "xenstore-ls -r" to fail. However, a guest administrator cannot prevent the host administrator from tearing down the domain. All systems using oxenstored are vulnerable. Building and using oxenstored is the default in the upstream Xen distribution, if the Ocaml compiler is available. Systems using C xenstored are not vulnerable.

osv:DEBIAN-CVE-2020-29482

xen

Fixed versions: 4.14.0+88-g1d1d1f5391-1

xen

Fixed versions: 4.14.0+88-g1d1d1f5391-1

xen

Fixed versions: 4.14.0+88-g1d1d1f5391-1

Complete source record
{
  "id": "8f183df8f3fe149c5da73e8115cfaec2813342a2067290d3852e8807b6e23eb2",
  "url": "https://osv.dev/vulnerability/DEBIAN-CVE-2020-29482",
  "method": "structured",
  "payload": {
    "kind": "advisory",
    "title": "DEBIAN-CVE-2020-29482",
    "summary": "An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.14.x. A guest may access xenstore paths via absolute paths containing a full pathname, or via a relative path, which implicitly includes /local/domain/$DOMID for their own domain id. Management tools must access paths in guests' namespaces, necessarily using absolute paths. oxenstored imposes a pathname limit that is applied solely to the relative or absolute path specified by the client. Therefore, a guest can create paths in its own namespace which are too long for management tools to access. Depending on the toolstack in use, a malicious guest administrator might cause some management tools and debugging operations to fail. For example, a guest administrator can cause \"xenstore-ls -r\" to fail. However, a guest administrator cannot prevent the host administrator from tearing down the domain. All systems using oxenstored are vulnerable. Building and using oxenstored is the default in the upstream Xen distribution, if the Ocaml compiler is available. Systems using C xenstored are not vulnerable.",
    "evidence": "osv:DEBIAN-CVE-2020-29482",
    "products": [
      {
        "name": {
          "value": "xen",
          "evidence": "/affected/0/package/name"
        },
        "prerequisites": [],
        "fixed_versions": [
          {
            "value": "4.14.0+88-g1d1d1f5391-1",
            "evidence": "/affected/0/ranges"
          }
        ],
        "affected_versions": []
      },
      {
        "name": {
          "value": "xen",
          "evidence": "/affected/1/package/name"
        },
        "prerequisites": [],
        "fixed_versions": [
          {
            "value": "4.14.0+88-g1d1d1f5391-1",
            "evidence": "/affected/1/ranges"
          }
        ],
        "affected_versions": []
      },
      {
        "name": {
          "value": "xen",
          "evidence": "/affected/2/package/name"
        },
        "prerequisites": [],
        "fixed_versions": [
          {
            "value": "4.14.0+88-g1d1d1f5391-1",
            "evidence": "/affected/2/ranges"
          }
        ],
        "affected_versions": []
      }
    ],
    "severity": "medium",
    "structured": {
      "id": "DEBIAN-CVE-2020-29482",
      "aliases": [
        "DEBIAN-CVE-2020-29482"
      ],
      "metrics": [
        {
          "type": "CVSS_V3",
          "score": "CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H"
        }
      ],
      "affected": [
        {
          "ranges": [
            {
              "type": "ECOSYSTEM",
              "events": [
                {
                  "introduced": "0"
                },
                {
                  "fixed": "4.14.0+88-g1d1d1f5391-1"
                }
              ]
            }
          ],
          "package": {
            "name": "xen",
            "purl": "pkg:deb/debian/xen?arch=source&distro=bookworm",
            "ecosystem": "Debian:12"
          },
          "database_specific": {
            "source": "https://storage.googleapis.com/debian-osv/debian-cve-osv/DEBIAN-CVE-2020-29482.json"
          },
          "ecosystem_specific": {
            "urgency": "not yet assigned"
          }
        },
        {
          "ranges": [
            {
              "type": "ECOSYSTEM",
              "events": [
                {
                  "introduced": "0"
                },
                {
                  "fixed": "4.14.0+88-g1d1d1f5391-1"
                }
              ]
            }
          ],
          "package": {
            "name": "xen",
            "purl": "pkg:deb/debian/xen?arch=source&distro=trixie",
            "ecosystem": "Debian:13"
          },
          "database_specific": {
            "source": "https://storage.googleapis.com/debian-osv/debian-cve-osv/DEBIAN-CVE-2020-29482.json"
          },
          "ecosystem_specific": {
            "urgency": "not yet assigned"
          }
        },
        {
          "ranges": [
            {
              "type": "ECOSYSTEM",
              "events": [
                {
                  "introduced": "0"
                },
                {
                  "fixed": "4.14.0+88-g1d1d1f5391-1"
                }
              ]
            }
          ],
          "package": {
            "name": "xen",
            "purl": "pkg:deb/debian/xen?arch=source&distro=forky",
            "ecosystem": "Debian:14"
          },
          "database_specific": {
            "source": "https://storage.googleapis.com/debian-osv/debian-cve-osv/DEBIAN-CVE-2020-29482.json"
          },
          "ecosystem_specific": {
            "urgency": "not yet assigned"
          }
        }
      ],
      "modified": "2026-10-26T12:02:43.252320733Z",
      "provider": "osv",
      "upstream": [
        "CVE-2020-29482"
      ],
      "references": [
        "https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2020-29482"
      ]
    },
    "related_cves": [
      {
        "value": "CVE-2020-29482",
        "evidence": "/upstream"
      }
    ],
    "security_relevant": true,
    "severity_evidence": "/severity/0/score"
  },
  "source_id": "core-osv",
  "document_id": 452880,
  "published_at": "2020-12-15T18:15:15.193+00:00"
}