CVE-2016-3159

low
Published 2016-04-13 · Modified 2026-05-06
CVSS v3
3.8
CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:N/A:N
CVSS v2
1.7
VIR risk
3.8

Description

The fpu_fxrstor function in arch/x86/i387.c in Xen 4.x does not properly handle writes to the hardware FSW.ES bit when running on AMD64 processors, which allows local guest OS users to obtain sensitive register content information from another guest by leveraging pending exception and mask bits. NOTE: this vulnerability exists because of an incorrect fix for CVE-2013-2076.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood
38%
Patch ETA

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: debian — https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2016-3159

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: cve@mitre.org — http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/xsa172.patch

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: cve@mitre.org — http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-172.html

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: suse — https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2016-3159.html

OS impact

OSVersionStatusFixed in
suse slesaffected
debian debian8.0affected
fedora fedora22affected
fedora fedora23affected
debian debianbookwormfixed4.8.0~rc3-1
debian debianbullseyefixed4.8.0~rc3-1
debian debianforkyfixed4.8.0~rc3-1
debian debiansidfixed4.8.0~rc3-1
debian debiantrixiefixed4.8.0~rc3-1

References

CWEs

CWE-200 CWE-284

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.