CVE-2015-3456

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Last Modified: UTC

Description

An out-of-bounds memory access flaw was found in the way QEMU's virtual Floppy Disk Controller (FDC) handled FIFO buffer access while processing certain FDC commands. A privileged guest user could use this flaw to crash the guest or, potentially, execute arbitrary code on the host with the privileges of the host's QEMU process corresponding to the guest.

Statement

This issue affects the versions of the kvm and xen packages as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, the versions of the qemu-kvm packages as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7, and the versions of qemu-kvm-rhev packages as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3. Future updates for the respective releases will address this flaw.

Affected Packages and Issued Red Hat Security Errata

Products / Services Components State Errata
OpenStack 4 for RHEL 6 qemu-kvm-rhev Fixed RHSA-2015:1004
RHEV 3.X Hypervisor and Agents for RHEL-6 qemu-kvm-rhev Fixed RHSA-2015:1001
RHEV 3.X Hypervisor and Agents for RHEL-6 rhev-hypervisor6 Fixed RHSA-2015:1011
RHEV 3.X Hypervisor and Agents for RHEL-7 qemu-kvm-rhev Fixed RHSA-2015:1000
RHEV 3.X Hypervisor and Agents for RHEL-7 rhev-hypervisor7 Fixed RHSA-2015:1011
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 kvm Affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 xen Fixed RHSA-2015:1002
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 kvm Fixed RHSA-2015:1003
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 qemu-kvm Fixed RHSA-2015:0998
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 Extended Update Support qemu-kvm Fixed RHSA-2015:1031
Unless explicitly stated as not affected, all previous versions of packages in any minor update stream of a product listed here should be assumed vulnerable, although may not have been subject to full analysis.

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Important note

CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authorities (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications ).

CVSS v2 Score Breakdown Red Hat NVD
CVSS v2 Base Score 6.5 7.7
Attack Vector Adjacent Network Adjacent Network
Access Complexity High Low
Authentication Single Single
Confidentiality Impact Complete Complete
Integrity Impact Complete Complete
Availability Impact Complete Complete

CVSS v2 Vector

Red Hat AV:A/AC:H/Au:S/C:C/I:C/A:C

NVD AV:A/AC:L/Au:S/C:C/I:C/A:C

Acknowledgements

Red Hat would like to thank Jason Geffner (CrowdStrike) for reporting this issue.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is Red Hat's CVSS v3 score or Impact different from other vendors?

For open source software shipped by multiple vendors, the CVSS base scores may vary for each vendor's version depending on the version they ship, how they ship it, the platform, and even how the software is compiled. This makes scoring of vulnerabilities difficult for third-party vulnerability databases such as NVD that only provide a single CVSS base score for each vulnerability. Red Hat scores reflect how a vulnerability affects our products specifically.

For more information, see https://access.redhat.com/solutions/762393.

My product is listed as "Under investigation" or "Affected", when will Red Hat release a fix for this vulnerability?

  • "Under investigation" doesn't necessarily mean that the product is affected by this vulnerability. It only means that our Analysis Team is still working on determining whether the product is affected and how it is affected.
  • "Affected" means that our Analysis Team has determined that this product is affected by this vulnerability and might release a fix to address this in the near future.

What can I do if my product is listed as "Will not fix"?

A "will not fix" status means that a fix for an affected product version is not planned or not possible due to complexity, which may create additional risk.

Available options depend mostly on the Impact of the vulnerability and the current Life Cycle phase of your product. Overall, you have the following options:
  • Upgrade to a supported product version that includes a fix for this vulnerability (recommended).
  • Apply a mitigation (if one exists).
  • Open a This content is not included.support case to request a prioritization of releasing a fix for this vulnerability.

What can I do if my product is listed as "Fix deferred"?

A deferred status means that a fix for an affected product version is not guaranteed due to higher-priority development work.

Available options depend mostly on the Impact of the vulnerability and the current Life Cycle phase of your product. Overall, you have the following options:
  • Apply a mitigation (if one exists).
  • Open a This content is not included.support case to request a prioritization of releasing a fix for this vulnerability.
  • Red Hat Engineering focuses on addressing high-priority issues based on their complexity or limited lifecycle support. Therefore, lower-priority issues will not receive immediate fixes.

What is a mitigation?

A mitigation is an action that can be taken to reduce the impact of a security vulnerability, without deploying any fixes.

I have a Red Hat product but it is not in the above list, is it affected?

The listed products were found to include one or more of the components that this vulnerability affects. These products underwent a thorough evaluation to determine their affectedness by this vulnerability. Note that layered products (such as container-based offerings) that consume affected components from any of the products listed in this table may be affected and are not represented.

Why is my security scanner reporting my product as vulnerable to this vulnerability even though my product version is fixed or not affected?

In order to maintain code stability and compatibility, Red Hat usually does not rebase packages to entirely new versions. Instead, we backport fixes and new features to an older version of the package we distribute. This can result in some security scanners that only consider the package version to report the package as vulnerable. To avoid this, we suggest that you use an approved vulnerability scanner from our This content is not included.Red Hat Vulnerability Scanner Certification program.