NULL pointer dereference in QEMU

1) NULL pointer dereference

EUVDB-ID: #VU38001

Risk: Medium

CVSSv4.0: 4 [CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:H/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:U/U:Green]

CVE-ID: CVE-2015-7549

CWE-ID: CWE-476 - NULL Pointer Dereference

Exploit availability: No

Description

The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to perform a denial of service (DoS) attack.

The vulnerability exists due to a NULL pointer dereference error in hw/pci/msix.c in QEMU (aka Quick Emulator) allows local guest OS privileged users to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and QEMU process crash) by leveraging failure to define the .write method. A remote attacker can perform a denial of service (DoS) attack.

Mitigation

Update to version 2.5.0.

Vulnerable software versions

QEMU: 2.0 - 2.4.3

CPE2.3

• cpe:2.3:a:qemu:qemu:2.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
• cpe:2.3:a:qemu:qemu:2.0.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
• cpe:2.3:a:qemu:qemu:2.0.1:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

External links

https://git.qemu.org/?p=qemu.git;a=commit;h=43b11a91dd861a946b231b89b754285
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2016-January/175380.html
https://www.debian.org/security/2016/dsa-3471
https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2015/12/14/2
https://www.securityfocus.com/bid/80761
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1291137
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201602-01

Q & A

Can this vulnerability be exploited remotely?

No. This vulnerability can be exploited locally. The attacker should have authentication credentials and successfully authenticate on the system.

How the attacker can exploit this vulnerability?

The attacker would have to trick the victim to open a a specially crafted file.

The attacker would have to login to the system and perform certain actions in order to exploit this vulnerability.

Is there known malware, which exploits this vulnerability?

No. We are not aware of malware exploiting this vulnerability.