CVE-2016-6835

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.0 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2016-12-10 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

The vmxnet_tx_pkt_parse_headers function in hw/net/vmxnet_tx_pkt.c in QEMU (aka Quick Emulator) allows local guest OS administrators to cause a denial of service (buffer over-read) by leveraging failure to check IP header length.

Affected products

Debian Linux: 8.0
QEMU: before 2.6.0 — fixed in 2.6.0
RedHat Virtualization: 4.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: QEMU 2.6.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://git.qemu.org/?p=qemu.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=93060258ae748573ca7197204125a2670047896d
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/08/11/7
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/08/18/4
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:2392
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2018/09/msg00007.html
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-stable/2016-08/msg00077.html
http://git.qemu.org/?p=qemu.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=93060258ae748573ca7197204125a2670047896d
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/08/11/7
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/08/18/4
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:2392
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2018/09/msg00007.html
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-stable/2016-08/msg00077.html

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