CentOS 6 : qemu-kvm (CESA-2012:1234)

high Nessus Plugin ID 61999

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Synopsis

The remote CentOS host is missing one or more security updates.

Description

Updated qemu-kvm packages that fix one security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having important security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the CVE link in the References section.

KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on AMD64 and Intel 64 systems. qemu-kvm is the user-space component for running virtual machines using KVM.

A flaw was found in the way QEMU handled VT100 terminal escape sequences when emulating certain character devices. A guest user with privileges to write to a character device that is emulated on the host using a virtual console back-end could use this flaw to crash the qemu-kvm process on the host or, possibly, escalate their privileges on the host. (CVE-2012-3515)

This flaw did not affect the default use of KVM. Affected configurations were :

* When guests were started from the command line ('/usr/libexec/qemu-kvm') without the '-nodefaults' option, and also without specifying a serial or parallel device, or a virtio-console device, that specifically does not use a virtual console (vc) back-end. (Note that Red Hat does not support invoking 'qemu-kvm' from the command line without '-nodefaults' on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.)

* Guests that were managed via libvirt, such as when using Virtual Machine Manager (virt-manager), but that have a serial or parallel device, or a virtio-console device, that uses a virtual console back-end. By default, guests managed via libvirt will not use a virtual console back-end for such devices.

Red Hat would like to thank the Xen project for reporting this issue.

All users of qemu-kvm should upgrade to these updated packages, which resolve this issue. After installing this update, shut down all running virtual machines. Once all virtual machines have shut down, start them again for this update to take effect.

Solution

Update the affected qemu-kvm packages.

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 61999

File Name: centos_RHSA-2012-1234.nasl

Version: 1.14

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: CentOS Local Security Checks

Published: 9/7/2012

Updated: 1/4/2021

Supported Sensors: Agentless Assessment, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 5.9

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.2

Temporal Score: 5.3

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2012-3515

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:qemu-img, cpe:/o:centos:centos:6, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:qemu-guest-agent, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:qemu-kvm-tools, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:qemu-kvm

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/CentOS/release, Host/CentOS/rpm-list

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 9/5/2012

Vulnerability Publication Date: 11/23/2012

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2012-3515

BID: 55413

RHSA: 2012:1234

Detections

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