CVE-2017-15119

Severity: high (CVSS 8.6 v3.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 3.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2018-07-27 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-400

Description

The Network Block Device (NBD) server in Quick Emulator (QEMU) before 2.11 is vulnerable to a denial of service issue. It could occur if a client sent large option requests, making the server waste CPU time on reading up to 4GB per request. A client could use this flaw to keep the NBD server from serving other requests, resulting in DoS.

Affected products

Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 14.04, 16.04, 17.10
Debian Linux: 9.0
QEMU: before 2.11.0 — fixed in 2.11.0
RedHat Virtualization: 4.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: QEMU 2.11.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2017/11/28/9
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/102011
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2018:1104
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2018:1113
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2017-15119
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2017-11/msg05044.html
https://usn.ubuntu.com/3575-1/
https://www.debian.org/security/2018/dsa-4213
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2017/11/28/9
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/102011
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2018:1104
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2018:1113

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