xen — security advisory
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
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"
}