CVE-2016-1981

Status: ModifiedMedium (5.5)—

QEMU (aka Quick Emulator) built with the e1000 NIC emulation support is vulnerable to an infinite loop issue. It could occur while processing data via transmit or receive descriptors, provided the initial receive/transmit descriptor head (TDH/RDH) is set outside the allocated descriptor buffer. A privileged user inside guest could use this flaw to crash the QEMU instance resulting in DoS.

CVSS

Version: 3.1
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Base score: 5.5

Exploitation probability (EPSS)

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days: 0.44%
Percentile among all scored CVEs: 37
Score date: 10/7/2026

EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System, FIRST) estimates how likely a vulnerability is to be exploited in the wild within 30 days. It complements CVSS (impact) and CISA KEV (confirmed exploitation).

Affected technologies (2)

Debian — Debian Linux Qemu — Qemu

CWEs

CWE-835

References

Raw JSON (NVD)

Show

{
  "id": "CVE-2016-1981",
  "cveTags": [],
  "metrics": {
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          "vectorString": "AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P",
          "authentication": "NONE",
          "integrityImpact": "NONE",
          "accessComplexity": "LOW",
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          "confidentialityImpact": "NONE"
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        "acInsufInfo": false,
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        "obtainAllPrivilege": false,
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      "description": [
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          "lang": "en",
          "value": "CWE-835"
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      "value": "QEMU (aka Quick Emulator) built with the e1000 NIC emulation support is vulnerable to an infinite loop issue. It could occur while processing data via transmit or receive descriptors, provided the initial receive/transmit descriptor head (TDH/RDH) is set outside the allocated descriptor buffer. A privileged user inside guest could use this flaw to crash the QEMU instance resulting in DoS."
    },
    {
      "lang": "es",
      "value": "QEMU (también conocido como Quick Emulator) construido con el soporte de emulación e1000 NIC es vulnerable a un problema de bucle infinito. Podría ocurrir mientras se procesan datos a través de descriptores de transmisión o recepción, siempre que la cabeza inicial del descriptor de recepción/transmisión (TDH/RDH) se establezca fuera del búfer de descriptor asignado. Un usuario privilegiado dentro del huésped podría utilizar esta falla para bloquear la instancia de QEMU resultando en DoS."
    }
  ],
  "lastModified": "2026-06-17T00:43:01.507",
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}