Resource exhaustion in Qemu

CVE-2021-3527

A flaw was found in the USB redirector device (usb-redir) of QEMU. Small USB packets are combined into a single, large transfer request, to reduce the overhead and improve performance. The combined size of the bulk transfer is used to dynamically allocate a variable length array (VLA) on the stack without proper validation. Since the total size is not bounded, a malicious guest could use this flaw to influence the array length and cause the QEMU process to perform an excessive allocation on the stack, resulting in a denial of service.

EPSS: 0.004 (29.7th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2021-3527?
CVE-2021-3527 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Qemu, classified under Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2021-05-26.
How severe is CVE-2021-3527?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.5 out of 10.