CVE-2015-8745

QEMU (aka Quick Emulator) built with a VMWARE VMXNET3 paravirtual NIC emulator support is vulnerable to crash issue. It could occur while reading Interrupt Mask Registers (IMR). A privileged (CAP_SYS_RAWIO) guest user could use this flaw to crash the QEMU process instance resulting in DoS.

Weakness

The product contains an assert() or similar statement that can be triggered by an attacker, which leads to an application exit or other behavior that is more severe than necessary.

Affected Software

Extended Description

While assertion is good for catching logic errors and reducing the chances of reaching more serious vulnerability conditions, it can still lead to a denial of service. For example, if a server handles multiple simultaneous connections, and an assert() occurs in one single connection that causes all other connections to be dropped, this is a reachable assertion that leads to a denial of service.

Potential Mitigations

References

• http://git.qemu.org/?p=qemu.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=c6048f849c7e3f009786df76206e895
• http://www.debian.org/security/2016/dsa-3471
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/01/04/4
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/01/04/7
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/79822
• http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1034575
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1270876
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201602-01
• http://git.qemu.org/?p=qemu.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=c6048f849c7e3f009786df76206e895
• http://www.debian.org/security/2016/dsa-3471
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/01/04/4
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/01/04/7
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/79822
• http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1034575
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1270876
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201602-01