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Fencer Intel
medium 6.9

CVE-2012-5513 json

The XENMEM_exchange handler in Xen 4.2 and earlier does not properly check the memory address, which allows local PV guest OS administrator…

published 2012-12-13 13 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2012-5405

cvss
6.9
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 35%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The XENMEM_exchange handler in Xen 4.2 and earlier does not properly check the memory address, which allows local PV guest OS administrators to cause a denial of service (crash) or possibly gain privileges via unspecified vectors that overwrite memory in the hypervisor reserved range.

Patch / fix

  • xen Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 4.1.3-5

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2012-5513

  • kernel RHEL 5 2.6.18-308.24.1.el5
  • kernel-PAE RHEL 5 2.6.18-308.24.1.el5
  • kernel-xen RHEL 5 2.6.18-308.24.1.el5
  • kernel-kdump RHEL 5 2.6.18-308.24.1.el5
  • kernel-debuginfo-common RHEL 5 2.6.18-308.24.1.el5

red hat advisories RHSA-2012:1540

  • 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-2012-5513 updated cvss 7.4

kernel: xen: XENMEM_exchange may overwrite hypervisor memory

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 5 server) kernel 2.6.18-308.24.1.el5, kernel-PAE 2.6.18-308.24.1.el5, kernel-xen 2.6.18-308.24.1.el5, kernel-kdump 2.6.18-308.24.1.el5, kernel-debuginfo-common 2.6.18-308.24.1.el5 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 5 client) kernel 2.6.18-308.24.1.el5, kernel-PAE 2.6.18-308.24.1.el5, kernel-xen 2.6.18-308.24.1.el5, kernel-debuginfo-common 2.6.18-308.24.1.el5
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2012:1540

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

0.41% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 35% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 6.9 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

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.