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Fencer Intel
high 8.4

CVE-2016-4480 json

The guest_walk_tables function in arch/x86/mm/guest_walk.c in Xen 4.6.x and earlier does not properly handle the Page Size (PS) page table…

published 2016-05-18 10 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2016-5467

cvss
8.4
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.5%
EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 45%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The guest_walk_tables function in arch/x86/mm/guest_walk.c in Xen 4.6.x and earlier does not properly handle the Page Size (PS) page table entry bit at the L4 and L3 page table levels, which might allow local guest OS users to gain privileges via a crafted mapping of memory.

Patch / fix

  • xen Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 4.8.0~rc3-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2016-4480

  • xen Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 4.4.2-0ubuntu0.14.04.6
  • xen Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 4.6.0-1ubuntu4.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2016-4480

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • xen SLES 11 SP3-LTSS, SLE Point of Sale 11 SP3, OpenStack Cloud 5 +2 more 4.2.5_21-27.1
  • xen SLES for SAP 12, SLES 12-LTSS 4.4.4_04-22.22.2
  • xen SLES 11 SP2-LTSS 4.1.6_08-29.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2016:2725-1SUSE-SU-2016:2533-1SUSE-SU-2016:2528-1

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-2016-4480 updated cvss 4.3

xen: x86 software guest page walk PS bit handling flaw (XSA-176)

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 xen
    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

Exploit prediction

0.54% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 45% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 8.4 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 7.2 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-264 Permissions, Privileges, and Access Controls

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.