Vulnerability Note VU#935424

As reported in the "Cross-VM ASL INtrospection (CAIN)" paper, an attacker with basic user rights within the attacking Virtual Machine (VM) can leverage memory deduplication within Virtual Machine Monitors (VMM). This effectively leaks the randomized base addresses of libraries and executables in the processes of neighboring VMs. Granting the attacker the ability to leak the Address-Space Layout of a process within a neighboring VM results in the potential to bypass ASLR.

A malicious attacker with only user rights within the attacking VM can reliably determine the base address of a process within a neighboring VM. This information can be used to develop a code-reuse or return oriented programming exploit for a known vulnerability in a target process. Attacking the target process is outside the scope of the CAIN attack..

Deactivation of memory deduplication is the only known way to completely defend against the CAIN attack.

See CAIN paper for a list of other mitigations.