CVE-2021-28698 - Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition ('Infinite Loop')

Severity

55%

Complexity

18%

Confidentiality

60%

long running loops in grant table handling In order to properly monitor resource use, Xen maintains information on the grant mappings a domain may create to map grants offered by other domains. In the process of carrying out certain actions, Xen would iterate over all such entries, including ones which aren't in use anymore and some which may have been created but never used. If the number of entries for a given domain is large enough, this iterating of the entire table may tie up a CPU for too long, starving other domains or causing issues in the hypervisor itself. Note that a domain may map its own grants, i.e. there is no need for multiple domains to be involved here. A pair of "cooperating" guests may, however, cause the effects to be more severe.

CVSS 3.1 Base Score 5.5. CVSS Attack Vector: local. CVSS Attack Complexity: low. CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H).

CVSS 2.0 Base Score 4.9. CVSS Attack Vector: local. CVSS Attack Complexity: low. CVSS Vector: (AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C).

Demo Examples

Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition ('Infinite Loop')

CWE-835

In the following code the method processMessagesFromServer attempts to establish a connection to a server and read and process messages from the server. The method uses a do/while loop to continue trying to establish the connection to the server when an attempt fails.


               
}
...// create socket to connect to server
}// establish connection to server// if connected then read and process messages from server
...// read and process messages
// keep trying to establish connection to the server// close socket and return success or failure

However, this will create an infinite loop if the server does not respond. This infinite loop will consume system resources and can be used to create a denial of service attack. To resolve this a counter should be used to limit the number of attempts to establish a connection to the server, as in the following code.


               
}
...// initialize number of attempts counter
}// establish connection to server// increment counter// if connected then read and process messages from server
...// read and process messages
// keep trying to establish connection to the server// up to a maximum number of attempts// close socket and return success or failure

Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition ('Infinite Loop')

CWE-835

For this example the method isReorderNeeded as part of a bookstore application that determines if a particular book needs to be reordered based on the current inventory count and the rate at which the book is being sold.


               
}
return isReorder;// get inventory count for book// find number of days until inventory count reaches minimum
days++;
// if number of days within reorder timeframe// set reorder return boolean to true
isReorder = true;

However, the while loop will become an infinite loop if the rateSold input parameter has a value of zero since the inventoryCount will never fall below the minimumCount. In this case the input parameter should be validated to ensure that a value of zero does not cause an infinite loop,as in the following code.


               
}
...// validate rateSold variable
return isReorder;

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