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XCP-ng Boosts Security with October 2023 Update

New security and maintenance updates are available for the only currently supported release of XCP-ng, version 8.2 LTS. This update includes fixes for several vulnerabilities in Xen and the Linux kernel in the controller domain. Additionally, maintenance updates that were ready and waiting for the next push are also included.

The fixed vulnerabilities in this security update are as follows:

  • XSA-440: CVE-2023-34323 - “xenstored: A transaction conflict can crash C Xenstored”. This vulnerability could potentially lead to a denial of service (DoS) attack. However, it only affects users who deliberately switched to C Xenstored from the default ocaml version used by XCP-ng.
  • XSA-441: CVE-2023-34324 - “Possible deadlock in Linux kernel event handling”. While this denial of service vulnerability is not exploitable in XCP-ng’s default configuration, a patched dom0 kernel is provided as an additional layer of defense.
  • XSA-442: CVE-2023-34326 - “x86/AMD: missing IOMMU TLB flushing”. On certain AMD systems, an attacker could exploit a vulnerability in the handling of PCI passthrough to escalate privileges, cause a denial of service, or gain access to leaked information.
  • XSA-443: CVE-2023-34325 - “Multiple vulnerabilities in libfsimage disk handling”. This privilege escalation vulnerability affects PV guests through flaws in the handling of libfsimage, particularly with XFS. While PV guests are deprecated and not security-supported on XCP-ng 8.2, a fix is provided for users who still have PV guests. It is strongly recommended to convert these VMs to HVM. The Xen Security Team plans to issue another update later this month to remove all uses of libfsimage wherever possible.
  • XSA-444: CVE-2023-34327 and CVE-2023-34327 - “x86/AMD: Debug Mask handling”. This vulnerability affects AMD CPUs, specifically the Steamroller microarchitecture and later. It allows guests to crash other guests and can also result in a crash of the host if a buggy or malicious PV guest kernel is present.

In addition to the security updates, this release includes other improvements:

  • The Storage Manager (sm) now has better handling of custom multipath configurations. Previously, modifying the /etc/multipath.conf file could lead to issues when the file was updated to add support for new hardware. The correct way to add custom multipath configuration is now through a file in the /etc/multipath/conf.d/ directory. XCP-ng 8.2 now includes a warning on top of the /etc/multipath.conf file, creates the /etc/multipath/conf.d/ directory by default, and provides a ready-to-modify /etc/multipath/conf.d/custom.conf file.
  • Guest templates have been synced with Citrix Hypervisor’s recent hotfixes. The only new template added is for Ubuntu 22.04.
  • A backport of Citrix Hypervisor’s hotfix (XS82ECU1048) for irqbalance has been included. This hotfix enables interrupt balancing for Fibre Channel (FC) PCI devices, improving performance on fast FC HBA SRs, especially when multipathing is used.

For more information and to download the October 2023 Security Update for XCP-ng 8.2, please visit the XCP-ng blog.

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