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Fencer Intel
high 7.2

CVE-2012-0217 in the critical feed json

The x86-64 kernel system-call functionality in Xen 4.1.2 and earlier, as used in Citrix XenServer 6.0.2 and earlier and other products; Ora…

published 2012-06-12 14 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2012-0253

cvss
7.2
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
39.6%
EPSS 39.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 98%
public exploits
4
Metasploit, Exploit-DB

Summary

The x86-64 kernel system-call functionality in Xen 4.1.2 and earlier, as used in Citrix XenServer 6.0.2 and earlier and other products; Oracle Solaris 11 and earlier; illumos before r13724; Joyent SmartOS before 20120614T184600Z; FreeBSD before 9.0-RELEASE-p3; NetBSD 6.0 Beta and earlier; Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 and R2 SP1 and Windows 7 Gold and SP1; and possibly other operating systems, when running on an Intel processor, incorrectly uses the sysret path in cases where a certain address is not a canonical address, which allows local users to gain privileges via a crafted application. NOTE: because this issue is due to incorrect use of the Intel specification, it should have been split into separate identifiers; however, there was some value in preserving the original mapping of the multi-codebase coordinated-disclosure effort to a single identifier.

Patch / fix

  • xen Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 4.1.3~rc1+hg-20120614.a9c0a89c08f2-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2012-0217

  • kernel RHEL 5 2.6.18-308.8.2.el5
  • kernel-PAE RHEL 5 2.6.18-308.8.2.el5
  • kernel-xen RHEL 5 2.6.18-308.8.2.el5
  • kernel-kdump RHEL 5 2.6.18-308.8.2.el5
  • kernel-debuginfo-common RHEL 5 2.6.18-308.8.2.el5
  • kernel RHEL 5.6 EUS 2.6.18-238.39.1.el5
  • kernel-PAE RHEL 5.6 EUS 2.6.18-238.39.1.el5
  • kernel-xen RHEL 5.6 EUS 2.6.18-238.39.1.el5

red hat advisories RHSA-2012:0721RHSA-2012:0720

  • xen openSUSE Tumbleweed 4.7.0_12-1.3

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10196-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2012-0217 updated cvss 7.9

kernel: x86-64: avoid sysret to non-canonical address

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 kernel-xen
    affected: no fix available
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 5 server) kernel 2.6.18-308.8.2.el5, kernel-PAE 2.6.18-308.8.2.el5, kernel-xen 2.6.18-308.8.2.el5, kernel-kdump 2.6.18-308.8.2.el5, kernel-debuginfo-common 2.6.18-308.8.2.el5 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 5 client) kernel 2.6.18-308.8.2.el5, kernel-PAE 2.6.18-308.8.2.el5, kernel-xen 2.6.18-308.8.2.el5, kernel-debuginfo-common 2.6.18-308.8.2.el5
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2012:0721
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux EUS (v. 5.6 server) kernel 2.6.18-238.39.1.el5, kernel-PAE 2.6.18-238.39.1.el5, kernel-xen 2.6.18-238.39.1.el5, kernel-kdump 2.6.18-238.39.1.el5, kernel-debuginfo-common 2.6.18-238.39.1.el5
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2012:0720
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2 kernel-rt, mrg-rt-release, kernel-rt-trace, kernel-rt-vanilla, kernel-rt-firmware
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Timeline

  1. First public exploit (Metasploit exploit/freebsd/local/intel_sysret_priv_esc)
  2. Published

Exploit prediction

39.57% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 98% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 7.2 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-119 Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.