CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2020-10701 — A missing authorization flaw was found in the libvirt API responsible for changing the QEMU agent response timeout

Medium CVSS 6.5

A missing authorization flaw was found in the libvirt API responsible for changing the QEMU agent response timeout. This flaw allows read-only connections to adjust the time that libvirt waits for the QEMU guest agent to respond to agent commands. Depending on the timeout value that is set, this flaw can make guest agent commands fail because the agent cannot respond in time. Unprivileged users with a read-only connection could abuse this flaw to set the response timeout for all guest agent messages to zero, potentially leading to a denial of service. This flaw affects libvirt versions before 6.2.0.

Severity
Medium
CVSS
6.5 (3.1)
Published
2021-05-27
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-862

Affected products

  • redhat / libvirt

Matched remediation archetype

Authorization bypass, IDOR, and cross-tenant access

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Map object and action authorization checks across API, UI, batch, import/export, and background-job paths.
  • Identify tenant, ownership, role, and policy boundaries for affected resources and administrative operations.
  • Use synthetic fixtures to compare intended access matrices without accessing another user's real data.

Remediate safely

  • Enforce server-side authorization at each resource access and state transition using the authenticated principal and trusted tenant context.
  • Scope data queries by tenant and ownership; treat client-supplied identifiers, roles, and policy claims as untrusted.
  • Add deny-by-default policy tests for horizontal and vertical access across every affected transport.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

The detailed catalog view below loads this exact record, its source evidence, and the full seven-phase agentic change plan.