CVE-2020-12967
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedThe lack of nested page table protection in the AMD SEV/SEV-ES feature could potentially lead to arbitrary code execution within the guest VM if a malicious administrator has access to compromise the server hypervisor.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysis · moderate confidenceAMD SEV/SEV-ES (Secure Encrypted Virtualization) lacks proper nested page table protection, which could allow a compromised hypervisor to execute arbitrary code within encrypted guest VMs, bypassing the memory encryption guarantees that SEV/SEV-ES is designed to provide.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE dataall versionsall versionsall versionsall versionsall versionsall versionsall versionsall versionsCVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- High
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Identify the CPU modelRun 'lscpu' or 'cat /proc/cpuinfo' and locate the 'Model name' field to identify the processorAffected if The CPU model is one of: Amd Epyc 7232p, 7251, 7252, 7261, 7262, 7272, 7281, or 7282
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Check for SEV/SEV-ES CPU feature flagsExamine /proc/cpuinfo for 'sev' or 'sev_es' in the flags section, or use 'grep -o "\bsev\b" /proc/cpuinfo'Affected if The 'sev' or 'sev_es' flag is present in the CPU flags indicating SEV/SEV-ES support is available on the processor
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Verify SEV/SEV-ES is actively enabled in virtual machinesFor KVM/QEMU: check active VM configurations via 'virsh list --all' then 'virsh dumpxml <vm-name>' looking for '<sev>' or '<sev-es>' elements under the <os> section. For Hyper-V: check virtualization settingsAffected if One or more VMs are configured with SEV or SEV-ES encryption enabled (feature element present in active domain XML)
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Confirm hypervisor is running on affected hardwareRun 'lscpu' and verify the CPU identified in step 1 is the actual host processor. On the hypervisor host, also verify 'cat /sys/module/kvm_amd/parameters/sev' shows '1' or 'Y' if the module is loadedAffected if The hypervisor host CPU matches an affected model AND the SEV kernel module is loaded and active
A system is affected if it uses any of the listed AMD Epyc CPU models (7232p, 7251, 7252, 7261, 7262, 7272, 7281, 7282) and has SEV or SEV-ES enabled for virtual machines, as all versions of these processors lack the nested page table protection.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor dataApply AMD-provided microcode/firmware updates that address the nested page table protection gap in SEV/SEV-ES; if no update is available, consider disabling SEV/SEV-ES for sensitive workloads or evaluating alternative virtualization security approaches.
- Consultation8.0 h
- Implementation4.0 h
- Testing12.0 h
- Review / QA4.0 h
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Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2020-12967 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2020-12967 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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