What is CVE-2016-7422?

CVE-2016-7422 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Qemu, classified under Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input (Classic Buffer Overflow). CVSS score: 6.0/10. Published 2016-12-10.

How severe is CVE-2016-7422?

Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.0 out of 10.

Buffer overflow in Qemu

CVE-2016-7422

The virtqueue_map_desc function in hw/virtio/virtio.c in QEMU (aka Quick Emulator) allows local guest OS administrators to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and QEMU process crash) via a large I/O descriptor buffer length value.

Vulnerability class: Buffer Overflow

Published 2016-12-10 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 6.0 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.004 (27.7th percentile), scored 2026-09-29.

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 28th percentile — 27.7% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.004 · newest: 0.004 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Qemu
openSUSE Leap — versions 42.2
Red Hat Enterprise Linux — versions 7.0
Red Hat OpenStack — versions 6.0, 7.0, 8
Red Hat Virtualization — versions 4.0

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-120 — Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input (Classic Buffer Overflow)

References

git.qemu.org/
lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2016-09/msg03546.html (mailing-list, Patch, Third Party Advisory)
access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:2392 (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)
lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-updates/2016-12/msg00140.html (vendor-advisory, Mailing List, Third Party Advisory)
security.gentoo.org/glsa/201609-01 (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)
www.securityfocus.com/bid/92996 (VDB Entry, Third Party Advisory, vdb-entry)
www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/09/16/10 (mailing-list, Mailing List, Third Party Advisory)
www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/09/16/4 (mailing-list, Mailing List, Third Party Advisory)
access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:2408 (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2016-7422?: CVE-2016-7422 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Qemu, classified under Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input (Classic Buffer Overflow). CVSS score: 6.0/10. Published 2016-12-10.
How severe is CVE-2016-7422?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.0 out of 10.