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Fencer Intel
low 2.1

CVE-2012-4544 json

The PV domain builder in Xen 4.2 and earlier does not validate the size of the kernel or ramdisk (1) before or (2) after decompression, whi…

published 2012-10-31 14 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2012-4472

cvss
2.1
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 36%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The PV domain builder in Xen 4.2 and earlier does not validate the size of the kernel or ramdisk (1) before or (2) after decompression, which allows local guest administrators to cause a denial of service (domain 0 memory consumption) via a crafted (a) kernel or (b) ramdisk.

Patch / fix

  • xen Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 4.1.3-4

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2012-4544

  • xen RHEL 5 VIRTUALIZATION, RHEL 5 3.0.3-142.el5_9.1
  • xen-libs RHEL 5 3.0.3-142.el5_9.1

red hat advisories RHSA-2013:0241

  • 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-2012-4544 updated cvss 2.7

xen: Xen domain builder Out-of-memory due to malicious kernel/ramdisk

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 5 server) xen 3.0.3-142.el5_9.1, xen-libs 3.0.3-142.el5_9.1 Red Hat RHEL Virtualization (v. 5 server) xen 3.0.3-142.el5_9.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2013:0241

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

Exploit prediction

0.42% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 36% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 2.1 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation

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.