CVE-2012-2121 Denial of service in n/a

Medium 4.9 Published Updated

Guest OS administrators can crash the host system and leak memory via KVM device hotplug operations, requiring kernel updates.

Exploited in the wild
Not known
Login needed
An administrator
Attackable
Local or same network only
Victim action needed
Not needed
Fix
Available

What is CVE-2012-2121?

CVE-2012-2121 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 17 May 2012. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

The KVM implementation in the Linux kernel before 3.3.4 does not properly manage the relationships between memory slots and the iommu, which allows guest OS users to cause a denial of service (memory leak and host OS crash) by leveraging administrative access to the guest OS to conduct hotunplug and hotplug operations on devices.

Weakness: CWE-264

Which versions are affected by CVE-2012-2121?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2012-2121?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2012-2121 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2012-2121 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as GHSA-c72r-fqqv-r8jm.

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