OSEC-2019-01

Vulnerability from osv_ocaml – Published: 2019-03-21 00:00 – Updated: 2026-01-13 12:00 – Source website
VLAI
Summary
Memory disclosure in mirage-net-xen
Details

Background

MirageOS is a library operating system using cooperative multitasking, which can be executed as a guest of the Xen hypervisor. Virtual devices, such as a network device, share memory between MirageOS and the hypervisor. To maintain adequate performance, the virtual device managing network communication between MirageOS and the Xen hypervisor maintains a shared pool of pages and reuses them for write requests.

Problem Description

In version 1.10.0 of netchannel, the API for handling network requests changed to provide higher-level network code with an interface for writing into memory directly. As part of this change, code paths which exposed memory taken from the shared page pool did not ensure that previous data had been cleared from the buffer. This error resulted in memory which the user did not overwrite staying resident in the buffer, and potentially being sent as part of unrelated network communication.

The mirage-tcpip library, which provides interfaces for higher-level operations like IPv4 and TCP header writes, assumes that buffers into which it writes have been zeroed, and therefore may not explicitly write some fields which are always zero. As a result, some packets written with netchannel v1.10.0 which were passed to mirage-tcpip with nonzero data will have incorrect checksums calculated and will be discarded by the receiver.

Impact

This issue discloses memory intended for another recipient and corrupts packets. Only version 1.10.0 of netchannel is affected. Version 1.10.1 fixes this issue.

Version 1.10.0 was available for less than one month and many upstream users had not yet updated their own API calls to use it. In particular, no version of qubes-mirage-firewall or its dependency mirage-nat compatible with version 1.10.0 was released.

Solution

Transmitting corrupt data and disclosing memory is fixed in version 1.10.1.


{
  "affected": [
    {
      "ecosystem_specific": {
        "opam_constraint": "netchannel {\u003e= \"1.10.0\" \u0026 \u003c \"1.10.1\"}"
      },
      "package": {
        "ecosystem": "opam",
        "name": "netchannel",
        "purl": "pkg:opam/netchannel"
      },
      "ranges": [
        {
          "events": [
            {
              "introduced": "1.10.0"
            },
            {
              "fixed": "1.10.1"
            }
          ],
          "type": "ECOSYSTEM"
        }
      ],
      "versions": [
        "1.10.0"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ranges": [
        {
          "events": [
            {
              "fixed": "bdfc658f139e39cdf1b8dada013b91df67a8e26a"
            },
            {
              "introduced": "e4f8d9f65a7999ac259cea57395bf5fbf00773bb"
            }
          ],
          "repo": "https://github.com/mirage/mirage-net-xen",
          "type": "GIT"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "credits": [
    {
      "name": "Mindy Preston",
      "type": "REPORTER"
    },
    {
      "name": "Mindy Preston",
      "type": "REMEDIATION_DEVELOPER"
    },
    {
      "name": "Thomas Leonard",
      "type": "REMEDIATION_REVIEWER"
    },
    {
      "name": "Hannes Mehnert",
      "type": "REMEDIATION_REVIEWER"
    }
  ],
  "database_specific": {
    "cwe": [
      "CWE-908"
    ],
    "human_link": "https://github.com/ocaml/security-advisories/tree/main/advisories/2019/OSEC-2019-01.md",
    "osv": "https://github.com/ocaml/security-advisories/tree/generated-osv/2019/OSEC-2019-01.json"
  },
  "details": "## Background\n\nMirageOS is a library operating system using cooperative multitasking, which can be executed as a guest of the Xen hypervisor. Virtual devices, such as a network device, share memory between MirageOS and the hypervisor. To maintain adequate performance, the virtual device managing network communication between MirageOS and the Xen hypervisor maintains a shared pool of pages and reuses them for write requests.\n\n## Problem Description\n\nIn version 1.10.0 of netchannel, the API for handling network requests changed to provide higher-level network code with an interface for writing into memory directly. As part of this change, code paths which exposed memory taken from the shared page pool did not ensure that previous data had been cleared from the buffer. This error resulted in memory which the user did not overwrite staying resident in the buffer, and potentially being sent as part of unrelated network communication.\n\nThe mirage-tcpip library, which provides interfaces for higher-level operations like IPv4 and TCP header writes, assumes that buffers into which it writes have been zeroed, and therefore may not explicitly write some fields which are always zero. As a result, some packets written with netchannel v1.10.0 which were passed to mirage-tcpip with nonzero data will have incorrect checksums calculated and will be discarded by the receiver.\n\n## Impact\n\nThis issue discloses memory intended for another recipient and corrupts packets. Only version 1.10.0 of netchannel is affected. Version 1.10.1 fixes this issue.\n\nVersion 1.10.0 was available for less than one month and many upstream users had not yet updated their own API calls to use it. In particular, no version of qubes-mirage-firewall or its dependency mirage-nat compatible with version 1.10.0 was released.\n\n## Solution\n\nTransmitting corrupt data and disclosing memory is fixed in version 1.10.1.",
  "id": "OSEC-2019-01",
  "modified": "2026-01-13T12:00:00Z",
  "published": "2019-03-21T00:00:00Z",
  "references": [
    {
      "type": "FIX",
      "url": "https://github.com/mirage/mirage-net-xen/pull/83"
    },
    {
      "type": "ADVISORY",
      "url": "https://mirageos.org/blog/MSA01"
    }
  ],
  "schema_version": "1.7.4",
  "severity": [
    {
      "score": "CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:N",
      "type": "CVSS_V3"
    }
  ],
  "summary": "Memory disclosure in mirage-net-xen"
}



Log in or create an account to share your comment.




Tags
Taxonomy of the tags.


Loading…

Loading…

Loading…

Drag nodes to arrange them. Double-click a related vulnerability to open it, or a source to visit its link. The Physics button on the left tunes the layout and the simulation; the legend at the bottom left hides or shows nodes by kind and by sighting type.

Forecast uses a logistic model when the trend is rising, or an exponential decay model when the trend is falling. Fitted via linearized least squares.

Sightings

Author Source Type Date Other

Nomenclature

  • Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
  • Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
  • Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
  • Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
  • Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
  • Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
  • Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
  • Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
Vulnerability timeline

Sightings and recorded dates, grouped by day · UTC

JSON
How durations are calculated

Following the VTEM framework (Black Hat USA 2015), time to patch starts when the vendor or a coordinator was informed, total time to patch at discovery, and disclosure to patch at public disclosure; vendor response time runs from the report to its acknowledgement. Time to exploit and time unpatched start at the earliest discovery or report, falling back to public disclosure. Unpatched time ends at the first recorded patch, or the calculation time when no patch is recorded. Exploitation to patch shows the interval between those two events; a published proof of concept is a public exploit, not exploitation.

Each result shows its source dates. A negative interval means the end event came first; when date-only inputs leave the order open, the result says so. Date-only inputs are approximate. The earliest evidence wins: KEV report dates and sightings are labelled as such. Records describing another vulnerability are listed but never calculated from, and a PoC alone does not establish exploitation. Missing patch evidence does not prove that no patch exists. Filters below change the event list only.

Events included in the timeline

Loading timeline…


    Loading…

    Loading…

    Loading…

    Related by attack behaviour

    Vulnerabilities whose description is nearest to this one in the vector space of the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-biencoder model. This is a similarity search over the bi-encoder space (plain cosine), not a classification, and it has no measured accuracy.