CVE-2025-12748: Libvirt: denial of service in xml parsing

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2025-11-11 · updated 2026-10-18
Weakness: CWE-770

Description

A flaw was discovered in libvirt in the XML file processing. More specifically, the parsing of user provided XML files was performed before the ACL checks. A malicious user with limited permissions could exploit this flaw by submitting a specially crafted XML file, causing libvirt to allocate too much memory on the host. The excessive memory consumption could lead to a libvirt process crash on the host, resulting in a denial-of-service condition.

Affected products

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10: all versions — fixed in 0:11.10.0-12.el10_2
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8: all versions
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9: all versions — fixed in 0:11.10.0-12.el9_8

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 0:11.10.0-12.el10_2; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 0:11.10.0-12.el9_8. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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