CVE-2017-15124 Denial of service in Qemu
A malicious remote VNC client can cause a denial of service on the QEMU host by triggering unbounded memory allocation through unthrottled framebuffer updates.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2017-15124?
CVE-2017-15124 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Qemu Qemu, published on 9 Jan 2018. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
VNC server implementation in Quick Emulator (QEMU) 2.11.0 and older was found to be vulnerable to an unbounded memory allocation issue, as it did not throttle the framebuffer updates sent to its client. If the client did not consume these updates, VNC server allocates growing memory to hold onto this data. A malicious remote VNC client could use this flaw to cause DoS to the server host.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2017-15124?
It affects 1 product.
Linux distribution packages (5)
qemu-img-ma Red Hat:enterprise_linux:7::server | All versions | 10:2.12.0-18.el7 |
qemu-kvm-common-ma Red Hat:enterprise_linux:7::server | All versions | 10:2.12.0-18.el7 |
qemu-kvm-ma Red Hat:enterprise_linux:7::server | All versions | 10:2.12.0-18.el7 |
qemu-kvm-ma-debuginfo Red Hat:enterprise_linux:7::server | All versions | 10:2.12.0-18.el7 |
qemu-kvm-tools-ma Red Hat:enterprise_linux:7::server | All versions | 10:2.12.0-18.el7 |
Products include Qemu Qemu.
How do I fix CVE-2017-15124?
Apply the vendor's patch.
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-2017-15124 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2017-15124 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Qemu Qemu
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2017-15124, GHSA-7hxc-fq33-47vp, RHSA-2018:3062, UBUNTU-CVE-2017-15124.