CVE-2015-4163: GNTTABOP_swap_grant_ref in Xen 4.2 through 4.5 does not check the grant table operation version, which allo...

Security readout for executives and security teams

CVE-2015-4163 is a Xen hypervisor denial-of-service flaw. A local guest domain could trigger a NULL pointer dereference through a grant table hypercall, potentially disrupting the virtualization host. This is mainly urgent for organizations still running Xen 4.2 through 4.5 or vendor products based on those versions. Exposure is limited to Xen-based virtualization environments running Xen 4.2 through 4.5 or vendor builds derived from them. The source bundle does not identify internet-facing exploitation; the attacker position is a local guest domain, such as a tenant VM or compromised guest workload. Treat this as a targeted infrastructure stability risk. It is not presented as remotely exploitable, but a malicious or compromised guest could disrupt affected Xen hosts. Patch legacy Xen estates, especially shared hosting, lab, and tenant environments. Mitigation focus: Identify Xen hosts and vendor products using Xen 4.2 through 4.5.; Review Xen XSA-134 and applicable Citrix, Debian, SUSE, or Gentoo advisories.; Apply vendor-provided security updates for the affected Xen packages or platforms..

Prepared

Jun 13, 2026, 22:39 UTC (UTC+00:00)

Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.