CVE-2020-12888

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Last Modified: UTC

Important Important Impact What does this mean?
5.3 CVSS v3 Base Score

Description

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel, where it allows userspace processes, for example, a guest VM, to directly access h/w devices via its VFIO driver modules. The VFIO modules allow users to enable or disable access to the devices' MMIO memory address spaces. If a user attempts to access the read/write devices' MMIO address space when it is disabled, some h/w devices issue an interrupt to the CPU to indicate a fatal error condition, crashing the system. This flaw allows a guest user or process to crash the host system resulting in a denial of service.

Statement

This issue does not affect the versions of the kernel package as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6 and Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2. This issue affects the versions of the kernel package as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and 8. Future kernel updates for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and 8 may address this issue.

A regression of CVE-2020-12888 has been reintroduced in RHEL 9.4–9.6 due to the backport of the fork: defer linking file vma patch (related to CVE-2024-27022). This flaw allows a privileged VFIO userspace process to retain stale MMIO mappings after a fork(), leading to host crashes if the child process accesses the device after MMIO has been disabled. While the bug was transient in upstream (v6.9 only), it remains present in multiple RHEL9 releases. Only users with high privileges and access to a VFIO-assigned device can exploit this, and no impact is observed in standard QEMU or DPDK configurations. Regarding this regression, the status of RHEL-9 fixes (fixed for 9.7 and 9.6 for the 21 Jul 2025 and pending for 9.4): RHEL-9.7: RHEL-73613 (kernel-5.14.0-578.el9) RHEL-9.6.z: RHEL-85623 (kernel-5.14.0-570.26.1.el9_6) RHEL-9.5.z: N/A RHEL-9.4.z: RHEL-85621 (under development) The 9.7 and 9.6.z fixes backport the upstream solution while the 9.4.z fix is pursuing a RHEL specific fix to reduce the scope and risk. RHEL-10 is not affected, because branched at 6.12.

Additional Information

External References

Content from www.cve.org is not included.https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2020-12888

Content from nvd.nist.gov is not included.https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-12888

Affected Packages and Issued Red Hat Security Errata

Products / Services Components State Errata
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 kernel Not affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 kernel Not affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 kernel Fixed RHSA-2020:2664
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 kernel-rt Fixed RHSA-2020:2665
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 kernel-alt Fixed RHSA-2020:2854
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 Advanced Update Support kernel Fixed RHSA-2020:2831
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 Advanced Update Support kernel Fixed RHSA-2020:2832
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 Telco Extended Update Support kernel Fixed RHSA-2020:2832
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 Update Services for SAP Solutions kernel Fixed RHSA-2020:2832
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 Advanced Update Support kernel Fixed RHSA-2020:3230
Unless explicitly stated as not affected, all previous versions of packages in any minor update stream of a product listed here should be assumed vulnerable, although may not have been subject to full analysis.

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Important note

CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authorities (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications ).

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown Red Hat NVD
CVSS v3 Base Score 5.3 5.3
Attack Vector Local Local
Attack Complexity High High
Privileges Required High High
User Interaction None None
Scope Changed Changed
Confidentiality Impact None None
Integrity Impact None None
Availability Impact High High

CVSS v3 Vector

Red Hat CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H

NVD CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is Red Hat's CVSS v3 score or Impact different from other vendors?

 For open source software shipped by multiple vendors, the CVSS base scores may vary for each vendor's version depending on the version they ship, how they ship it, the platform, and even how the software is compiled. This makes scoring of vulnerabilities difficult for third-party vulnerability databases such as NVD that only provide a single CVSS base score for each vulnerability. Red Hat scores reflect how a vulnerability affects our products specifically.

For more information, see https://access.redhat.com/solutions/762393.

My product is listed as "Under investigation" or "Affected", when will Red Hat release a fix for this vulnerability?
  • "Under investigation" doesn't necessarily mean that the product is affected by this vulnerability. It only means that our Analysis Team is still working on determining whether the product is affected and how it is affected.
  • "Affected" means that our Analysis Team has determined that this product is affected by this vulnerability and might release a fix to address this in the near future.

What can I do if my product is listed as "Will not fix"?

 A "will not fix" status means that a fix for an affected product version is not planned or not possible due to complexity, which may create additional risk.

Available options depend mostly on the Impact of the vulnerability and the current Life Cycle phase of your product. Overall, you have the following options:
  • Upgrade to a supported product version that includes a fix for this vulnerability (recommended).
  • Apply a mitigation (if one exists).
  • Open a This content is not included.support case to request a prioritization of releasing a fix for this vulnerability.

What can I do if my product is listed as "Fix deferred"?

 A deferred status means that a fix for an affected product version is not guaranteed due to higher-priority development work.

Available options depend mostly on the Impact of the vulnerability and the current Life Cycle phase of your product. Overall, you have the following options:
  • Apply a mitigation (if one exists).
  • Open a This content is not included.support case to request a prioritization of releasing a fix for this vulnerability.
  • Red Hat Engineering focuses on addressing high-priority issues based on their complexity or limited lifecycle support. Therefore, lower-priority issues will not receive immediate fixes.

What is a mitigation?

 A mitigation is an action that can be taken to reduce the impact of a security vulnerability, without deploying any fixes.

I have a Red Hat product but it is not in the above list, is it affected?

 The listed products were found to include one or more of the components that this vulnerability affects. These products underwent a thorough evaluation to determine their affectedness by this vulnerability. Note that layered products (such as container-based offerings) that consume affected components from any of the products listed in this table may be affected and are not represented.

Why is my security scanner reporting my product as vulnerable to this vulnerability even though my product version is fixed or not affected?

 In order to maintain code stability and compatibility, Red Hat usually does not rebase packages to entirely new versions. Instead, we backport fixes and new features to an older version of the package we distribute. This can result in some security scanners that only consider the package version to report the package as vulnerable. To avoid this, we suggest that you use an approved vulnerability scanner from our This content is not included.Red Hat Vulnerability Scanner Certification program.