dbcve.org
Enterprise LinuxOperating system · Redhat

CVE-2023-5088

HIGH · 7.0 CVSS v3.1 Published 2023-11-03
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 8.2.0 or later.
See remediation →
72/100
Remediation priority · Elevated
Zero-click Patch available

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 bug in QEMU could cause a guest I/O operation otherwise addressed to an arbitrary disk offset to be targeted to offset 0 instead (potentially overwriting the VM's boot code). This could be used, for example, by L2 guests with a virtual disk (vdiskL2) stored on a virtual disk of an L1 (vdiskL1) hypervisor to read and/or write data to LBA 0 of vdiskL1, potentially gaining control of L1 at its next reboot.

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

A detailed technical summary for this CVE is being prepared.

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= 9.0
QemuApplication
Affected:< 8.2.0

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
High
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/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 8.2.0 or later
Fixed in 8.2.0
Vendor patch bugzilla.redhat.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

QEMU 8.2.0 or later

  1. 1. Verify current QEMU version by running: qemu-img --version or rpm -q qemu-kvm
  2. 2. For Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems, update the qemu-kvm package using: sudo dnf update qemu-kvm
  3. 3. Alternatively, for Debian/Ubuntu-based systems: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install qemu-kvm
  4. 4. After updating, verify the new version is 8.2.0 or later: qemu-img --version
  5. 5. Restart any running QEMU/KVM virtual machines to ensure the updated version is loaded
  6. 6. For Enterprise Linux 8.0 and 9.0 specifically, ensure the qemu-kvm package is updated to the version available in the RHEL repositories that includes the fix
Caveat Virtual machines should be shut down before upgrading QEMU; ensure proper backups of VM configurations and disk images before performing the update

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 $1,950. Get the upgrade done

Scan for this in your stack

Free · runs locally
dbcve dependency scanner

Check whether your project pulls in CVE-2023-5088 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.

Get it on GitHub Scan in the browser

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-2023-5088 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

Be the first to add a field note for this CVE — a mitigation you’ve verified, a version caveat, or a link to a working fix. Sign in above to contribute.

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