What is CVE-2016-7466?

CVE-2016-7466 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Qemu, classified under Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime. CVSS score: 6.0/10. Published 2016-12-10.

How severe is CVE-2016-7466?

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

Vulnerability in Qemu

CVE-2016-7466

Memory leak in the usb_xhci_exit function in hw/usb/hcd-xhci.c in QEMU (aka Quick Emulator), when the xhci uses msix, allows local guest OS administrators to cause a denial of service (memory consumption and possibly QEMU process crash) by repeatedly unplugging a USB device.

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 (34.0th percentile), scored 2026-09-29.

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 34th percentile — 34.0% 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-772 — Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime

References

www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/09/19/8 (mailing-list, Mailing List, Third Party Advisory)
www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/09/20/3 (mailing-list, Mailing List, Third Party Advisory)
security.gentoo.org/glsa/201611-11 (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)
www.securityfocus.com/bid/93029 (VDB Entry, Third Party Advisory, vdb-entry)
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)
git.qemu.org/
lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2016-09/msg02773.html (mailing-list, Patch, Third Party Advisory)
access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:2408 (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2016-7466?: CVE-2016-7466 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Qemu, classified under Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime. CVSS score: 6.0/10. Published 2016-12-10.
How severe is CVE-2016-7466?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.0 out of 10.