What is CVE-2015-8568?

CVE-2015-8568 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Qemu, classified under Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime. CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2017-04-11.

How severe is CVE-2015-8568?

Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.5 out of 10.

Vulnerability in Qemu

CVE-2015-8568

Memory leak in QEMU, when built with a VMWARE VMXNET3 paravirtual NIC emulator support, allows local guest users to cause a denial of service (host memory consumption) by trying to activate the vmxnet3 device repeatedly.

Published 2017-04-11 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 6.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.005 (37.3th percentile), scored 2026-09-30.

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 37th percentile — 37.3% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.005 · newest: 0.005 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Qemu
Debian Linux — versions 8.0

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-772 — Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime

References

www.securityfocus.com/bid/79721 (VDB Entry, Third Party Advisory, vdb-entry)
www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2015/12/15/10 (mailing-list, Mailing List, Third Party Advisory)
lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2015-12/msg02299.html (mailing-list, Patch, Mailing List, Third Party Advisory)
www.debian.org/security/2016/dsa-3471 (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)
bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi (Patch, Third Party Advisory, Issue Tracking)
security.gentoo.org/glsa/201602-01 (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2015-8568?: CVE-2015-8568 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Qemu, classified under Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime. CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2017-04-11.
How severe is CVE-2015-8568?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.5 out of 10.