CVE-2024-2494: Libvirt: negative g_new0 length can lead to unbounded memory allocation

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.2 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: 2024-03-21 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-789

Description

A flaw was found in the RPC library APIs of libvirt. The RPC server deserialization code allocates memory for arrays before the non-negative length check is performed by the C API entry points. Passing a negative length to the g_new0 function results in a crash due to the negative length being treated as a huge positive number. This flaw allows a local, unprivileged user to perform a denial of service attack by causing the libvirt daemon to crash.

Affected products

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8: all versions — fixed in 8100020240409073027.489197e6
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Advanced Virtualization: all versions
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9: all versions — fixed in 0:10.0.0-6.2.el9_4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 8100020240409073027.489197e6; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 0:10.0.0-6.2.el9_4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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