RHEL 6 : qemu-kvm (RHSA-2013:0896)

high Nessus Plugin ID 66771

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Synopsis

The remote Red Hat host is missing a security update for qemu-kvm.

Description

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 6 host has packages installed that are affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the RHSA-2013:0896 advisory.

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.

It was found that QEMU Guest Agent (the qemu-ga service) created certain files with world-writable permissions when run in daemon mode (the default mode). An unprivileged guest user could use this flaw to consume all free space on the partition containing the qemu-ga log file, or modify the contents of the log. When a UNIX domain socket transport was explicitly configured to be used (not the default), an unprivileged guest user could potentially use this flaw to escalate their privileges in the guest. This update requires manual action. Refer below for details.
(CVE-2013-2007)

This update does not change the permissions of the existing log file or the UNIX domain socket. For these to be changed, stop the qemu-ga service, and then manually remove all group and other permissions on the affected files, or remove the files.

Note that after installing this update, files created by the guest-file-open QEMU Monitor Protocol (QMP) command will still continue to be created with world-writable permissions for backwards compatibility.

This issue was discovered by Laszlo Ersek of Red Hat.

This update also fixes the following bugs:

* Previously, due to integer overflow in code calculations, the qemu-kvm utility was reporting incorrect memory size on QMP events when using the virtio balloon driver with more than 4 GB of memory. This update fixes the overflow in the code and qemu-kvm works as expected in the described scenario. (BZ#958750)

* When the set_link flag is set to off to change the status of a network card, the status is changed to down on the respective guest. Previously, with certain network cards, when such a guest was restarted, the status of the network card was unexpectedly reset to up, even though the network was unavailable. A patch has been provided to address this bug and the link status change is now preserved across restarts for all network cards.
(BZ#927591)

All users of qemu-kvm should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. 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.

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for this issue but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

Solution

Update the RHEL qemu-kvm package based on the guidance in RHSA-2013:0896.

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 66771

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2013-0896.nasl

Version: 1.16

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Red Hat Local Security Checks

Published: 6/3/2013

Updated: 4/15/2025

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 5.2

Vendor

Vendor Severity: Moderate

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.9

Temporal Score: 5.1

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2013-2007

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.1

Temporal Score: 6.2

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:qemu-guest-agent, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:qemu-img, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:qemu-guest-agent-win32, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:qemu-kvm-tools, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:qemu-kvm

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

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 6/3/2013

Vulnerability Publication Date: 5/21/2013

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2013-2007

BID: 59675

RHSA: 2013:0896

Detections

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