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Fencer Intel
high 7.5

CVE-2018-12617 in the critical feed json

qmp_guest_file_read in qga/commands-posix.c and qga/commands-win32.c in qemu-ga (aka QEMU Guest Agent) in QEMU 2.12.50 has an integer overf…

published 8y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2018-4573

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
24.6%
EPSS 24.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 97%
public exploits
1
Exploit-DB

Summary

qmp_guest_file_read in qga/commands-posix.c and qga/commands-win32.c in qemu-ga (aka QEMU Guest Agent) in QEMU 2.12.50 has an integer overflow causing a g_malloc0() call to trigger a segmentation fault when trying to allocate a large memory chunk. The vulnerability can be exploited by sending a crafted QMP command (including guest-file-read with a large count value) to the agent via the listening socket.

Patch / fix

  • qemu Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1:3.1+dfsg-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2018-12617

  • qemu Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 2.0.0+dfsg-2ubuntu1.44
  • qemu Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 1:2.5+dfsg-5ubuntu10.33
  • qemu Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 1:2.11+dfsg-1ubuntu7.8

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2018-12617

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • qemu SLES for SAP 12 SP3, SLES 12 SP3, SLED 12 SP3 2.9.1-6.19.11
  • qemu SLES 12 SP2-BCL, OpenStack Cloud 7, Enterprise Storage 4 +2 more 2.6.2-41.43.3
  • qemu SLE Module for Server Applications 15, SLE Module for Basesystem 15 2.11.2-9.9.1
  • kvm SLES for SAP 11 SP4, SLES 11 SP4 1.4.2-60.15.2
  • kvm SLES 11 SP3-TERADATA, SLES 11 SP3-LTSS, SLE Point of Sale 11 SP3 1.4.2-53.23.2
  • xen SLES 11 SP3-LTSS, SLE Point of Sale 11 SP3 4.2.5_21-45.25.1
  • xen SLES for SAP 11 SP4, SLES 11 SP4, SLE Software Development Kit 11 SP4 4.4.4_34-61.32.1
  • qemu SLES for SAP 12 SP1, SLES 12 SP1-LTSS 2.3.1-33.12.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2018:3555-1SUSE-SU-2018:2973-2SUSE-SU-2018:2973-1SUSE-SU-2018:2679-1SUSE-SU-2018:2650-1SUSE-SU-2018:2615-1

Is CVE-2018-12617 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2018-12617 updated cvss 3.8

Qemu: qemu-guest-agent: Integer overflow causes segmentation fault in qmp_guest_file_read()

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 qemu-img, qemu-kvm, virtio-win, qemu-kvm-tools, qemu-guest-agent, qemu-guest-agent-win32
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 virtio-win, qemu-guest-agent
    affected: no fix available, no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 qemu-img, qemu-kvm, libcacard, qemu-img-ma, qemu-kvm-ma, qemu-kvm-rhev, +5 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 qemu-img, qemu-kvm, virtio-win, qemu-kvm-core, qemu-kvm-tests, qemu-kvm-common, +9 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 7 (Kilo) qemu-img-rhev, qemu-kvm-rhev, libcacard-rhev, qemu-kvm-tools-rhev, libcacard-devel-rhev, libcacard-tools-rhev, +1 more Red Hat OpenStack Platform 8 (Liberty) qemu-img-rhev, qemu-kvm-rhev, libcacard-rhev, qemu-kvm-tools-rhev, libcacard-devel-rhev, libcacard-tools-rhev, +1 more Red Hat OpenStack Platform 9 (Mitaka) qemu-img-rhev, qemu-kvm-rhev, libcacard-rhev, qemu-kvm-tools-rhev, libcacard-devel-rhev, libcacard-tools-rhev, +1 more Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10 (Newton) qemu-img-rhev, qemu-kvm-rhev, qemu-kvm-tools-rhev, qemu-kvm-common-rhev
    +2 more products
    Red Hat OpenStack Platform 12 (Pike) qemu-img-rhev, qemu-kvm-rhev, qemu-kvm-tools-rhev, qemu-kvm-common-rhev Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13 (Queens) qemu-img-rhev, qemu-kvm-rhev, qemu-kvm-tools-rhev, qemu-kvm-common-rhev
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Timeline

  1. Published
  2. First public exploit (EDB-44925)

Exploit prediction

24.60% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 97% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • EDB-44925 QEMU Guest Agent 2.12.50 - Denial of Service dos, 2018-06-22
  • gist.github.com https://gist.github.com/fakhrizulkifli/c7740d28efa07dafee66d4da5d857ef6 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-190 Integer Overflow or Wraparound

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.