CVE-2024-45818 | Deadlock in x86 HVM standard VGA handling

The hypervisor contains code to accelerate VGA memory accesses for HVM guests, when the (virtual) VGA is in "standard" mode. Locking involved there has an unusual discipline, leaving a lock acquired past the return from the function that acquired it. This behavior results in a problem when emulating an instruction with two memory accesses, both of which touch VGA memory (plus some further constraints which aren't relevant here). When emulating the 2nd access, the lock that is already being held would be attempted to be re-acquired, resulting in a deadlock. This deadlock was already found when the code was first introduced, but was analysed incorrectly and the fix was incomplete. Analysis in light of the new finding cannot find a way to make the existing locking discipline work. In staging, this logic has all been removed because it was discovered to be accidentally disabled since Xen 4.7. Therefore, we are fixing the locking problem by backporting the removal of most of the feature. Note that even with the feature disabled, the lock would still be acquired for any accesses to the VGA MMIO region.

Published: 2024-12-19 Last update: 2025-05-20 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2024-45818 is rated Moderate Risk (43.9/100): CVSS Medium severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.27%). Mandatory action: Review affected assets and schedule remediation.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2024-45818

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 2026-05-10 0.17% 0.27% +0.11%
2 2026-03-04 0.06% 0.17% +0.11%
3 2026-03-01 0.06%

Full EPSS history (18 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2024-45818

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
6.5 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:L)
They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:L)
A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:C)
Breaking this can reach past the original component and bite other resources—bigger blast radius.
Confidentiality (C:H)
Serious risk that confidential data gets exposed in a big way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
2.0 4.0 134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2024-45818

OS Trackers for CVE-2024-45818

vendor priority summary link
alpine CVE-2024-45818: 1 source package rows (xen); 401 state rows across 7 repos (3.17-main, 3.18-main, 3.19-main, 3.20-main, 3.21-main, 3.22-main, edge-main); fixed 38, open 363. https://security.alpinelinux.org/vuln/CVE-2024-45818
debian end-of-life CVE-2024-45818 end-of-life priority: Debian including 1 source packages (xen), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 4, open 1. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2024-45818
suse medium https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2024-45818/
ubuntu medium CVE-2024-45818 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (xen), 9 status rows across 9 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, noble, oracular, plucky, questing, upstream, xenial): needs-triage 7, ignored 2. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2024-45818

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2024-45818

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
xen xen >= 4.6.0, < 4.20.0 cpe:2.3:o:xen:xen:*:*:*:*:*:*:x86:*

References for CVE-2024-45818

cvelogic Threat Intelligence