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CVE-2016-1981

20
FAUCET Score

CVE-2016-1981 describes an infinite loop vulnerability in QEMU's e1000 NIC emulation, affecting Debian Linux and QEMU instances. A privileged guest user can trigger this denial-of-service by manipulating transmit or receive descriptor heads to fall outside allocated buffers, crashing the QEMU host. With a CVSS score of 5.5 (Medium), this local attack requires low privileges and has a high impact on availability. There is no evidence of active exploitation, public exploit code, or significant community discussion, suggesting a low current threat.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
<= 2.5.1.1CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:qemu:qemu:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
7.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:7.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
8.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:8.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 3.1

5.5MEDIUM

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

Attack Vector
LOCAL
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
LOW
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact
NONE
Integrity Impact
NONE
Availability Impact
HIGH
Exploitability Score
1.8
Impact Score
3.6
CvssVersion
3.1

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
0.44%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
36.3%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-25
Model: v2026.06.15
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0044 is in the 90th percentile among its peer group of 15,937 CVEs.

Social Chatter

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.0 Reddit, 0.0 Bluesky, 0.0 Mastodon, and 0.1 GitHub mentions.

Media Mentions

No media coverage found for this CVE.

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.1 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.

Remediation

Patch Available

Vendor Patches (10)

redhatpatch availablevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7Fixed in: qemu-kvm-10:1.5.3-126.el7
View patch
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5Fixed in: kvm
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5Fixed in: xen
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6Fixed in: qemu-kvm
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6Fixed in: qemu-kvm-rhev
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7Fixed in: qemu-kvm-rhev
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 5 (Icehouse)Fixed in: qemu-kvm-rhev
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 6 (Juno)Fixed in: qemu-kvm-rhev
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 7 (Kilo)Fixed in: qemu-kvm-rhev
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat OpenStack Platform 8 (Liberty)Fixed in: qemu-kvm-rhev

Vendor Advisories (1)

redhatCVE-2016-1981Low

Qemu: net: e1000 infinite loop in start_xmit and e1000_receive_iov routines

Jan 19, 2016

References

rhn.redhat.com / errata/RHSA-2016-2585.html
Third Party Advisory
bugzilla.redhat.com / show_bug.cgi
Issue Tracking
lists.gnu.org / archive/html/qemu-devel/2016-01/msg03454.html
PatchVendor Advisory
security.gentoo.org / glsa/201604-01
Third Party Advisory
debian.org / security/2016/dsa-3469
Third Party Advisory
debian.org / security/2016/dsa-3470
Third Party Advisory
debian.org / security/2016/dsa-3471
Third Party Advisory
openwall.com / lists/oss-security/2016/01/19/10
Mailing ListThird Party Advisory
openwall.com / lists/oss-security/2016/01/22/1
Mailing ListThird Party Advisory
securityfocus.com / bid/81549
Third Party AdvisoryVDB Entry