CVE-2023-46835 - CVE House
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Status published Unknown CVE-2023-46835

x86/AMD: mismatch in IOMMU quarantine page table levels

Vulnerability Description

The current setup of the quarantine page tables assumes that the quarantine domain (dom_io) has been initialized with an address width of DEFAULT_DOMAIN_ADDRESS_WIDTH (48) and hence 4 page table levels. However dom_io being a PV domain gets the AMD-Vi IOMMU page tables levels based on the maximum (hot pluggable) RAM address, and hence on systems with no RAM above the 512GB mark only 3 page-table levels are configured in the IOMMU. On systems without RAM above the 512GB boundary amd_iommu_quarantine_init() will setup page tables for the scratch page with 4 levels, while the IOMMU will be configured to use 3 levels only, resulting in the last page table directory (PDE) effectively becoming a page table entry (PTE), and hence a device in quarantine mode gaining write access to the page destined to be a PDE. Due to this page table level mismatch, the sink page the device gets read/write access to is no longer cleared between device assignment, possibly leading to data leaks.

Impact Analysis

Refer to official advisory for detailed impact metrics.

Remediation

Ensure systems are updated to the latest vendor-supplied patch levels.

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Credits & Attribution

The following person or organization is credited with identifying this vulnerability, as recorded in the NVD database:

  • This issue was discovered by Roger Pau Monné of XenServer.

Affected Vendor

Affected Software

Xen
Vulnerable Versions:
consult Xen advisory XSA-445

Timeline

Official Publish: January 5th, 2024
Last Modified: November 4th, 2025
Added to House: July 22nd, 2026

CVSS Vectors

No vector data available

Weaknesses (CWE)

No CWE data available

MITRE ATT&CK TTPs

No associated TTPs found for this vulnerability.