CVE-2016-8578

Publication date 4 November 2016

Last updated 25 August 2025

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

The v9fs_iov_vunmarshal function in fsdev/9p-iov-marshal.c in QEMU (aka Quick Emulator) allows local guest OS administrators to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and QEMU process crash) by sending an empty string parameter to a 9P operation.

Read the notes from the security team

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
qemu	16.10 yakkety	Fixed 1:2.6.1+dfsg-0ubuntu5.1
	16.04 LTS xenial	Fixed 1:2.5+dfsg-5ubuntu10.6
	14.04 LTS trusty	Fixed 2.0.0+dfsg-2ubuntu1.30
	12.04 LTS precise	Not in release
qemu-kvm	16.10 yakkety	Not in release
	16.04 LTS xenial	Not in release
	14.04 LTS trusty	Not in release
	12.04 LTS precise	Not affected

Notes

tyhicks

Privileged user inside the guest can trigger a DoS of the QEMU host process In Trusty and Xenial, the vulnerable code is in the v9fs_unmarshal() function of fsdev/virtio-9p-marshal.c

Patch details

For informational purposes only. We recommend not to cherry-pick updates. How can I get the fixes?

Package	Patch details
qemu	Upstream: http://git.qemu.org/?p=qemu.git;a=commit;h=ba42ebb863ab7d40adc79298422ed9596df8f73a

Severity score breakdown

Parameter	Value
Base score	6.0 · Medium
Attack vector	Local
Attack complexity	Low
Privileges required	High
User interaction	None
Scope	Changed
Confidentiality	None
Integrity impact	None
Availability impact	High
Vector	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H