Is CVE-2023-46836 actively exploited?

CVE-2023-46836 has no public evidence of in-the-wild exploitation as of 2025-11-04.

What is the CVSS score for CVE-2023-46836?

CVE-2023-46836 has a CVSS score of 4.7 (MEDIUM severity). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N.

How do I patch CVE-2023-46836?

Patch guidance is available from xen security advisories. CVEDatabase generates AI-assisted remediation guidance on demand for CVE-2023-46836.

CVE-2023-46836 - remediation guidance & executive summary

Description

The fixes for XSA-422 (Branch Type Confusion) and XSA-434 (Speculative Return Stack Overflow) are not IRQ-safe. It was believed that the mitigations always operated in contexts with IRQs disabled. However, the original XSA-254 fix for Meltdown (XPTI) deliberately left interrupts enabled on two entry paths; one unconditionally, and one conditionally on whether XPTI was active. As BTC/SRSO and Meltdown affect different CPU vendors, the mitigations are not active together by default. Therefore, there is a race condition whereby a malicious PV guest can bypass BTC/SRSO protections and launch a BTC/SRSO attack against Xen.

CVSS Metrics

Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Attack Vector: local
Complexity: high
Privileges: low
User Action: none
Scope: unchanged
Confidentiality: high
Integrity: none
Availability: none
Weaknesses: NVD-CWE-noinfo

Metadata

Primary Vendor: XEN
Published: 1/5/2024
Last Modified: 11/4/2025
Source: NIST NVD
Note: Verify all details with official vendor sources before applying patches.

CVE-2023-46836

Description

CVSS Metrics

Metadata

Affected Products

Remediation Guidance

Executive Summary