CVE-2020-29480
An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.14.x. Neither xenstore implementation does any permission checks when reporting a xenstore watch…
- Published
- Updated
- Reserved
- Assigned by
- mitre
Description
An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.14.x. Neither xenstore implementation does any permission checks when reporting a xenstore watch event. A guest administrator can watch the root xenstored node, which will cause notifications for every created, modified, and deleted key. A guest administrator can also use the special watches, which will cause a notification every time a domain is created and destroyed. Data may include: number, type, and domids of other VMs; existence and domids of driver domains; numbers of virtual interfaces, block devices, vcpus; existence of virtual framebuffers and their backend style (e.g., existence of VNC service); Xen VM UUIDs for other domains; timing information about domain creation and device setup; and some hints at the backend provisioning of VMs and their devices. The watch events do not contain values stored in xenstore, only key names. A guest administrator can observe non-sensitive domain and device lifecycle events relating to other guests. This information allows some insight into overall system configuration (including the number and general nature of other guests), and configuration of other guests (including the number and general nature of other guests' devices). This information might be commercially interesting or might make other attacks easier. There is not believed to be exposure of sensitive data. Specifically, there is no exposure of VNC passwords, port numbers, pathnames in host and guest filesystems, cryptographic keys, or within-guest data.
Timeline
ID reserved
By mitre
- 12 days later
· 12 days later
Published
- 4 years later
· 4 years later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVDNVD · Modified | 3.1 | Low2.3 | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.31% · top 76% of all CVEs (7 Nov 2026)
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Low 2.3.
Weakness
Affected products
n/a
- affected n/a
References (4)
- https://xenbits.xenproject.org/xsa/advisory-115.html (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
- DSA-4812 (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_refsource_DEBIANx_transferred
- FEDORA-2020-64859a826b (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_refsource_FEDORAx_transferred
- FEDORA-2020-df772b417b (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_refsource_FEDORAx_transferred
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://trackcve.app/cve/CVE-2020-29480)Record last updated .