CVE-2016-4020

medium
Published 2016-05-25 · Modified 2026-05-06
CVSS v3
6.5
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N
CVSS v2
2.1
VIR risk
6.5

Description

The patch_instruction function in hw/i386/kvmvapic.c in QEMU does not initialize the imm32 variable, which allows local guest OS administrators to obtain sensitive information from host stack memory by accessing the Task Priority Register (TPR).

Predictions

Exploit likelihood
65%
Patch ETA

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: debian — https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2016-4020

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: secalert@redhat.com — https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2016-04/msg01118.html

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: secalert@redhat.com — https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2016-04/msg01106.html

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: suse — https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2016-4020.html

OS impact

OSVersionStatusFixed in
suse slesaffected
redhat rhel7.0affected
redhat rhel7.4affected
redhat rhel7.5affected
redhat rhel7.6affected
redhat rhel7.7affected
ubuntu ubuntu12.04affected
ubuntu ubuntu14.04affected
ubuntu ubuntu15.10affected
ubuntu ubuntu16.04affected
debian debian8.0affected
debian debianbookwormfixed1:2.6+dfsg-2
debian debianbullseyefixed1:2.6+dfsg-2
debian debianforkyfixed1:2.6+dfsg-2
debian debiansidfixed1:2.6+dfsg-2
debian debiantrixiefixed1:2.6+dfsg-2

Application impact

VendorProductVersionsFixed
qemuqemu{"endIncluding":"2.6.2"}
redhat redhatopenstack6.0
redhat redhatopenstack7.0
redhat redhatopenstack8
redhat redhatopenstack9
redhat redhatopenstack10
redhat redhatopenstack11
redhat redhatvirtualization4.0

References

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.