Skip to content
Heist/ feed
Back to feed
MediumFix available

xen — security advisory

Type: advisorySources: OSVAdvisory ID: DEBIAN-CVE-2020-29486

An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.14.x. Nodes in xenstore have an ownership. In oxenstored, a owner could give a node away. However, node ownership has quota implications. Any guest can run another guest out of quota, or create an unbounded number of nodes owned by dom0, thus running xenstored out of memory A malicious guest administrator can cause a denial of service against a specific guest or against the whole host. 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-2020-29486
Confirmed fixed CVEs
Not specified
Updated in this feed
1 Nov 2026, 13:50 UTC · Revision 1

Source evidence

DEBIAN-CVE-2020-29486

core-osv · Original source

Published 15 Dec 2020, 18:15 UTC

An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.14.x. Nodes in xenstore have an ownership. In oxenstored, a owner could give a node away. However, node ownership has quota implications. Any guest can run another guest out of quota, or create an unbounded number of nodes owned by dom0, thus running xenstored out of memory A malicious guest administrator can cause a denial of service against a specific guest or against the whole host. 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-2020-29486

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": "5a9b7e19aa0493cab8b81d6769770c7b6849471897d75ff8954c821f7223a028",
  "url": "https://osv.dev/vulnerability/DEBIAN-CVE-2020-29486",
  "method": "structured",
  "payload": {
    "kind": "advisory",
    "title": "DEBIAN-CVE-2020-29486",
    "summary": "An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.14.x. Nodes in xenstore have an ownership. In oxenstored, a owner could give a node away. However, node ownership has quota implications. Any guest can run another guest out of quota, or create an unbounded number of nodes owned by dom0, thus running xenstored out of memory A malicious guest administrator can cause a denial of service against a specific guest or against the whole host. 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-2020-29486",
    "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-2020-29486",
      "aliases": [
        "DEBIAN-CVE-2020-29486"
      ],
      "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-2020-29486.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-2020-29486.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-2020-29486.json"
          },
          "ecosystem_specific": {
            "urgency": "not yet assigned"
          }
        }
      ],
      "modified": "2026-10-26T12:02:43.207723530Z",
      "provider": "osv",
      "upstream": [
        "CVE-2020-29486"
      ],
      "references": [
        "https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2020-29486"
      ]
    },
    "related_cves": [
      {
        "value": "CVE-2020-29486",
        "evidence": "/upstream"
      }
    ],
    "security_relevant": true,
    "severity_evidence": "/severity/0/score"
  },
  "source_id": "core-osv",
  "document_id": 452878,
  "published_at": "2020-12-15T18:15:15.567+00:00"
}