What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2018-14678

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2018-07-28 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-665

Description

An issue was discovered in the Linux kernel through 4.17.11, as used in Xen through 4.11.x. The xen_failsafe_callback entry point in arch/x86/entry/entry_64.S does not properly maintain RBX, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (uninitialized memory usage and system crash). Within Xen, 64-bit x86 PV Linux guest OS users can trigger a guest OS crash or possibly gain privileges.

Affected products

• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 14.04, 16.04, 18.04
• Debian Linux: 8.0, 9.0
• Linux kernel: from 4.14.21 before 4.14.61; from 4.15.5 before 4.17.13 — fixed in 4.14.61, 4.17.13
• xen: through 4.11.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 4.14.61, 4.17.13. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/104924
• http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1041397
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2018/10/msg00003.html
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/3931-1/
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/3931-2/
• https://www.debian.org/security/2018/dsa-4308
• https://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-274.html
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/104924
• http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1041397
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2018/10/msg00003.html
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/3931-1/
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/3931-2/

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