Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2020-11742

medium Nessus Plugin ID 258563

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.

- An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.13.x, allowing guest OS users to cause a denial of service because of bad continuation handling in GNTTABOP_copy. Grant table operations are expected to return 0 for success, and a negative number for errors. The fix for CVE-2017-12135 introduced a path through grant copy handling where success may be returned to the caller without any action taken. In particular, the status fields of individual operations are left uninitialised, and may result in errant behaviour in the caller of GNTTABOP_copy. A buggy or malicious guest can construct its grant table in such a way that, when a backend domain tries to copy a grant, it hits the incorrect exit path. This returns success to the caller without doing anything, which may cause crashes or other incorrect behaviour. (CVE-2020-11742)

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

Solution

There is no known solution at this time.

See Also

https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2020-11742

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 258563

File Name: unpatched_CVE_2020_11742.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Misc.

Published: 8/30/2025

Updated: 8/30/2025

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Low

Score: 3.6

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Low

Base Score: 2.1

Temporal Score: 1.6

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2020-11742

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5.5

Temporal Score: 4.8

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

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:16.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:xen, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:18.04:-:lts

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: 4/14/2020

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2020-11742