CVE-2024-31142
Published: 16 May 2024
Summary
CVE-2024-31142 is a high-severity Protection Mechanism Failure (CWE-693) vulnerability in Xen Xen. Its CVSS base score is 7.5 (High).
Operationally, ranked in the top 12.9% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
Deeper analysis
The vulnerability CVE-2024-31142 arises from a logical error in the XSA-407 mitigation for Branch Type Confusion within the Xen hypervisor. Because the mitigation is not applied properly when intended, and because XSA-434 for Speculative Return Stack Overflow depends on the same infrastructure, both issues are equally impacted.
An attacker with low privileges can exploit the flaw over a network with high attack complexity, resulting in high impacts to confidentiality, integrity, and availability on affected Xen systems.
The XSA-455 advisory and related distribution notices describe mitigation through updated Xen packages, with fixes referenced at xenbits.xenproject.org and made available in Fedora updates.
The EPSS score rose materially from lower values to a peak of 0.1478 on 2025-12-11 before receding, indicating a period of increased exploitation interest after disclosure.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2024-29052
Vulnerability details
Because of a logical error in XSA-407 (Branch Type Confusion), the mitigation is not applied properly when it is intended to be used. XSA-434 (Speculative Return Stack Overflow) uses the same infrastructure, so is equally impacted. For more details, see:…
more
https://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-407.html https://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-434.html
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Likely Mitigating Controls AI
Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.
Implements a reliable, tamperproof protection mechanism whose completeness can be assured.
Procedures for training on protection mechanisms reduce the chance of protection mechanism failures being present or exploitable.
Documented procedures to implement assessment, authorization, and monitoring controls prevent these protection mechanisms from failing due to undefined processes.
Direct evaluation of whether controls produce desired security outcomes detects protection mechanism failures and enables remediation.
Requires assessment that protection mechanisms are correctly implemented and producing intended security outcomes.
The POA&M process ensures identified weaknesses in protection mechanisms are documented and scheduled for remediation, reducing the duration they remain exploitable.
Ongoing control assessments and analysis of monitoring data enable timely detection and response when protection mechanisms fail.
Impact analysis identifies changes that could weaken or disable existing protection mechanisms.