CVE-2016-9602

Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 3.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2018-04-26 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-59

Description

Qemu before version 2.9 is vulnerable to an improper link following when built with the VirtFS. A privileged user inside guest could use this flaw to access host file system beyond the shared folder and potentially escalating their privileges on a host.

Affected products

Debian Linux: 8.0
QEMU: before 2.9 — fixed in 2.9

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: QEMU 2.9. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2017/01/17/12
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/95461
http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1037604
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2016-9602
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2018/09/msg00007.html
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2017-01/msg06225.html
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2017-02/msg04347.html
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201704-01
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2017/01/17/12
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/95461
http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1037604
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2016-9602

Get alerted when CVE-2016-9602 or the next vulnerability affects your stack