The HVMOP_pagetable_dying hypercall in Xen 4.0, 4.1, and 4.2 does not properly check the pagetable state when running on shadow pagetables, which allows a local HVM guest OS to cause a denial of service (hypervisor crash) via unspecified vectors.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2012-4538 is rated Low Risk (27.3/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.06%). Mandatory action: Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.
Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.
EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).
| # | Date | Old EPSS score | New EPSS score | Delta (New - Old) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2023-03-07 | 1.55% | 0.06% | -1.48% |
| 2 | 2022-02-04 | — | 1.55% | — |
Full EPSS history (2 records total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.9 | 2.0 | MEDIUM |
|
3.9 | 6.9 | [email protected] |
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
debian
|
not yet assigned | CVE-2012-4538 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (xen), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. | https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2012-4538 |
gentoo
|
normal | CVE-2012-4538: 2 GLSA(s) (201309-24, 201604-03), 4 atom(s) (app-emulation/pvgrub, app-emulation/xen, app-emulation/xen-pvgrub, app-emulation/xen-tools); latest impact normal. | https://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=CVE-2012-4538 |
redhat
|
medium | — | https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2012-4538 |
ubuntu
|
medium | CVE-2012-4538 medium priority: Ubuntu including 4 source packages (xen, xen-3.1, xen-3.2, xen-3.3), 24 status rows across 6 suites (hardy, lucid, oneiric, precise, quantal, upstream): DNE 14, not-affected 6, released 3, needed 1. | https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2012-4538 |