Guest-triggered process crash via premature vDPA cleanup
Published Sep 13, 2023 · Updated Feb 13, 2025
Denial of service in QEMU on RHEL and Fedora Linux allows guest OS users to crash QEMU through network-device hot-unplug. The vhost_vdpa_cleanup() path frees vhost-net and vDPA structures while a peer NIC remains attached, so later virtio status handling receives a null vhost-net pointer and asserts. Exploitation requires low-privileged control of a guest and winning the asynchronous interval before the virtio-net PCI frontend detaches; the bounded consequence is interruption of that virtual machine's QEMU process.
Summary
What happened
Denial of service in QEMU on RHEL and Fedora Linux allows guest OS users to crash QEMU through network-device hot-unplug. The vhost_vdpa_cleanup() path frees vhost-net and vDPA structures while a peer NIC remains attached, so later virtio status handling receives a null vhost-net pointer and asserts. Exploitation requires low-privileged control of a guest and winning the asynchronous interval before the virtio-net PCI frontend detaches; the bounded consequence is interruption of that virtual machine's QEMU process.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2023-3301
- Published
- Sep 13, 2023
- Updated
- Feb 13, 2025
- Vendor
- Red Hat
- Product
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
- Classifications
- T1499.004
- Attack vector
- local
- Privileges
- authenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Sep 13, 2023CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Feb 13, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
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What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
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Attacks
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Weakness, pattern, technique
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Technologies
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