# CVE-2023-3301: Triggerable assertion due to race condition in hot-unplug

> A malicious guest can trigger a denial of service in QEMU by exploiting a race condition during hot-unplug operations.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.6 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Any signed-in user
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 13 Sep 2023
- **Updated:** 13 Feb 2025
- **Also known as:** AZL-28790, AZL-35170, BELL-CVE-2023-3301, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-3301, GHSA-cp42-9j6q-v649, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-3301

## What is CVE-2023-3301?

CVE-2023-3301 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Qemu Qemu, published on 13 Sep 2023. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

A flaw was found in QEMU. The async nature of hot-unplug enables a race scenario where the net device backend is cleared before the virtio-net pci frontend has been unplugged. A malicious guest could use this time window to trigger an assertion and cause a denial of service.

Weakness: CWE-362 (Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization), CWE-617 (Reachable Assertion)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-3301?

It affects 2 products.


Products: Qemu Qemu, Redhat Enterprise Linux.

## How do I fix CVE-2023-3301?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2023-3301 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-3301 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Qemu Qemu

- [CVE-2022-36648](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-36648/): Null dereference in n/a (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2015-8556](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2015-8556/): Race condition in n/a (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2009-3616](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2009-3616/): Use after free in n/a (critical 9.9)
- [CVE-2019-12928](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2019-12928/): Command injection in n/a (critical 9.8)
- [CVE-2019-12929](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2019-12929/): Command injection in n/a (critical 9.8)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2023-3301 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2023-3301 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Qemu Qemu, published on 13 Sep 2023. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-3301 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Qemu Qemu. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-3301/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-3301/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-3301
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-3301
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2023-3301

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-3301/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.