Incomplete Fix for Invalid Instruction Handling in KVM Subsystem Allows for Denial of Service

CVE-2014-8481 · MEDIUM Severity

AV:L/AC:L/AU:N/C:N/I:N/A:C

The instruction decoder in arch/x86/kvm/emulate.c in the KVM subsystem in the Linux kernel before 3.18-rc2 does not properly handle invalid instructions, which allows guest OS users to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and host OS crash) via a crafted application that triggers (1) an improperly fetched instruction or (2) an instruction that occupies too many bytes. NOTE: this vulnerability exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2014-8480.

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