Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2021-47277

high Nessus Plugin ID 245714

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Synopsis

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed with a vulnerability that the vendor indicates will not be patched.

Description

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed that are impacted by a vulnerability without a vendor supplied patch available.

- kvm: avoid speculation-based attacks from out-of-range memslot accesses KVM's mechanism for accessing guest memory translates a guest physical address (gpa) to a host virtual address using the right-shifted gpa (also known as gfn) and a struct kvm_memory_slot. The translation is performed in __gfn_to_hva_memslot using the following formula: hva = slot->userspace_addr + (gfn - slot->base_gfn) * PAGE_SIZE It is expected that gfn falls within the boundaries of the guest's physical memory. However, a guest can access invalid physical addresses in such a way that the gfn is invalid. __gfn_to_hva_memslot is called from kvm_vcpu_gfn_to_hva_prot, which first retrieves a memslot through __gfn_to_memslot. While __gfn_to_memslot does check that the gfn falls within the boundaries of the guest's physical memory or not, a CPU can speculate the result of the check and continue execution speculatively using an illegal gfn. The speculation can result in calculating an out-of-bounds hva. If the resulting host virtual address is used to load another guest physical address, this is effectively a Spectre gadget consisting of two consecutive reads, the second of which is data dependent on the first. Right now it's not clear if there are any cases in which this is exploitable. One interesting case was reported by the original author of this patch, and involves visiting guest page tables on x86. Right now these are not vulnerable because the hva read goes through get_user(), which contains an LFENCE speculation barrier. However, there are patches in progress for x86 uaccess.h to mask kernel addresses instead of using LFENCE; once these land, a guest could use speculation to read from the VMM's ring 3 address space. Other architectures such as ARM already use the address masking method, and would be susceptible to this same kind of data-dependent access gadgets.
Therefore, this patch proactively protects from these attacks by masking out-of-bounds gfns in
__gfn_to_hva_memslot, which blocks speculation of invalid hvas. Sean Christopherson noted that this patch does not cover kvm_read_guest_offset_cached. This however is limited to a few bytes past the end of the cache, and therefore it is unlikely to be useful in the context of building a chain of data dependent accesses. (CVE-2021-47277)

Note that Nessus relies on the presence of the package as reported by the vendor.

Solution

There is no known solution at this time.

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 245714

File Name: unpatched_CVE_2021_47277.nasl

Version: 1.2

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Misc.

Published: 8/8/2025

Updated: 8/22/2025

Supported Sensors: Agentless Assessment, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Nessus Agent, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6.0

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Low

Base Score: 1.9

Temporal Score: 1.4

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2021-47277

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.1

Temporal Score: 6.2

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-hwe, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:16.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:22.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-oracle-5.3, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-hwe-edge, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-intel-5.13, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-riscv-5.11, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-riscv, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:24.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-kvm, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-azure-5.19, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-gcp-5.19, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-gcp-5.11, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.19, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-oracle-5.0, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-oracle-5.13, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.2, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-oem-5.17, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-gcp, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-gke-5.15, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-hwe-6.2, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-azure-fips, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-oem, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-aws-5.19, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:18.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-gkeop-5.4, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-allwinner-5.19, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-aws-5.13, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-aws-6.2, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-hwe-5.11, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-azure-fde, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-aws-5.3, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-aws-5.11, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-azure-edge, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-riscv-5.8, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-starfive-5.19, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-azure, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-gcp-5.3, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-raspi-realtime, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-gke, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-aws-5.0, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-nvidia-6.2, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-aws-5.8, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-oem-5.13, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-gcp-fips, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-raspi2, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-fips, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-intel-iot-realtime, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-gke-5.4, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-azure-5.11, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-oem-5.10, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-gcp-6.2, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-aws, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-azure-6.2, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-aws-fips, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-azure-5.3, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-oem-6.0, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-azure-5.8, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-hwe-5.19, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-lts-xenial, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-azure-fde-5.15, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-oracle-5.8, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-hwe-5.13, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-riscv-5.19, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-gke-4.15, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-starfive-6.2, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-oem-6.1, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-gcp-5.8, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:14.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-realtime, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-azure-5.13, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-gcp-5.13, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-oem-5.6, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-hwe-5.8, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-oracle-5.11, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-azure-fde-6.2, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:20.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-oem-5.14, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:linux-azure-fde-5.19

Required KB Items: Host/cpu, Host/local_checks_enabled, global_settings/vendor_unpatched, Host/OS/identifier

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Vulnerability Publication Date: 1/28/2022

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2021-47277

Detections

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