CVE-2015-8556
Qemu: virtfs: local privilege escalation via virtfs-proxy-helper
Severity
ImportantRed Hat Product Security
CVSS 2.0
Review impact separately from score.
Published · December 14, 2015
Updated · May 13, 2026
Description
A Time of Creation To Time of Usage (TOCTTOU) flaw was discovered in the QEMU emulator built with VirtFS(file system pass-through) support to share folders between host and guest. The flaw occurs if the 'virtfs-proxy-helper' program is installed with SUID permissions or has 'CAP_CHOWN' capability. An unprivileged, local attacker could exploit this flaw to potentially escalate their privileges and gain root access to the system.
Statement
This issue does not affect the versions of the kvm and xen packages as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.
This issue does not affect the versions of the qemu-kvm packages as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, and the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 based versions of qemu-kvm-rhev packages as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.
This issue does not affect the versions of the qemu-kvm packages as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.
This issue does not affect the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 based versions of the qemu-kvm-rhev packages as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.
CVSS score applicability
The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.
Mitigation
No mitigation is specified in collected source.
CVSS / CWE
CVSS 2.0 · 6.2AV:L/AC:H/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C
CWE-250 · Execution with Unnecessary Privileges