Enterprise LinuxOperating system · Redhat

CVE-2021-3611

MEDIUM · 6.5 CVSS v3.1 Published 2022-05-11
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 7.0.0 or later.
See remediation →
67/100
Remediation priority · Elevated
Public exploit Zero-click

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
A stack overflow vulnerability was found in the Intel HD Audio device (intel-hda) of QEMU. A malicious guest could use this flaw to crash the QEMU process on the host, resulting in a denial of service condition. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to system availability. This flaw affects QEMU versions prior to 7.0.0.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis
How this class of weakness works · CWE-119

The program reads or writes outside the bounds of an allocated buffer, corrupting adjacent memory. With crafted input an attacker can overwrite control data and, with effort, redirect execution to their own code. Remediation ranges from bounds checking and safe library functions to compiler mitigations, usually alongside a careful audit of the surrounding code.

General guidance for the memory buffer bounds error class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
Enterprise LinuxOperating system
Affected:= 8.0
QemuApplication
Affected:< 7.0.0

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to 7.0.0 or later
Fixed in 7.0.0
Recommended fix High confidence

QEMU 7.0.0 or later

  1. 1. Identify the current QEMU version installed on the system
  2. 2. Ensure all running virtual machines are shut down gracefully
  3. 3. Use the system's package manager to update QEMU to version 7.0.0 or later (e.g., 'dnf update qemu-kvm' or 'apt-get upgrade qemu-kvm' depending on the distribution)
  4. 4. Verify the updated QEMU version is 7.0.0 or higher after the update completes
  5. 5. Restart the libvirt or QEMU service if necessary
  6. 6. Restart virtual machines as needed
Caveat Review QEMU 7.0.0 release notes for any guest OS or tooling compatibility changes before upgrading production systems

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

We can perform the upgrade in your staging environment and verify nothing breaks — typical engagement from $2,850. Get the upgrade done

Scan for this in your stack

Free · runs locally
dbcve dependency scanner

Check whether your project pulls in CVE-2021-3611 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.

References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2021-3611 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
  • No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
  • No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data