CVE-2016-1568

Description

A use-after-free flaw was found in the way QEMU's IDE AHCI emulator processed certain AHCI Native Command Queuing (NCQ) AIO commands. A privileged guest user could use this flaw to crash the QEMU process instance or, potentially, execute arbitrary code on the host with privileges of the QEMU process.

Statement

The vector of exploit requires to enable TIOCSTI with sysctl, because it is by default disabled since RHEL9 and on. Then, the user would have to be in root terminal, from there the user would have to run a malicious app that would use TIOCSTI to jump out of the child non-root shell back to the parent root shell.

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Info alert:Important note

CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).

CVSS v2 Score Breakdown

Red HatNVDcve.org
Base Score46.9N/A
Attack VectorAdjacent NetworkLocalN/A
Access ComplexityHighMediumN/A
AuthenticationSingleNoneN/A
Confidentiality ImpactPartialCompleteN/A
Integrity ImpactPartialCompleteN/A
Availability ImpactPartialCompleteN/A

Vector

Red Hat: AV:A/AC:H/Au:S/C:P/I:P/A:P

NVD: AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Understanding the Weakness (CWE)

Integrity

Technical Impact: Modify Memory

The use of previously freed memory may corrupt valid data, if the memory area in question has been allocated and used properly elsewhere.

Availability

Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart

If chunk consolidation occurs after the use of previously freed data, the process may crash when invalid data is used as chunk information.

Confidentiality

Technical Impact: Read Memory

Read operations on freed memory can sometimes leak sensitive information instead of causing a crash

Integrity,Confidentiality,Availability

Technical Impact: Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands

If malicious data is entered before chunk consolidation can take place, it may be possible to take advantage of a write-what-where primitive to execute arbitrary code. If the newly allocated data happens to hold a class, in C++ for example, various function pointers may be scattered within the heap data. If one of these function pointers is overwritten with an address to valid shellcode, execution of arbitrary code can be achieved.

Acknowledgements

Red Hat would like to thank Qinghao Tang (Qihoo 360 Marvel Team) for reporting this issue.

Frequently Asked Questions

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