CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2020-15863 — hw/net/xgmac.c in the XGMAC Ethernet controller in QEMU before 07-20-2020 has a buffer overflow

Medium CVSS 5.3

hw/net/xgmac.c in the XGMAC Ethernet controller in QEMU before 07-20-2020 has a buffer overflow. This occurs during packet transmission and affects the highbank and midway emulated machines. A guest user or process could use this flaw to crash the QEMU process on the host, resulting in a denial of service or potential privileged code execution. This was fixed in commit 5519724a13664b43e225ca05351c60b4468e4555.

Severity
Medium
CVSS
5.3 (3.1)
Published
2020-07-28
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-787

Affected products

  • qemu / qemu
  • qemu / qemu / 5.1.0
  • debian / debian_linux / 10.0
  • canonical / ubuntu_linux / 16.04
  • canonical / ubuntu_linux / 18.04
  • canonical / ubuntu_linux / 20.04

Matched remediation archetype

Buffer bounds, memory safety, and memory corruption

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

Check exposure

  • Identify affected native-code versions, build flags, architectures, parsers, codecs, drivers, and input paths in all shipped artifacts.
  • Determine whether untrusted data reaches the affected routine and the process privilege, sandbox, and network exposure.
  • Confirm statically linked, vendored, firmware, and platform-provided copies, not only package-manager records.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the maintained upstream correction or replace the affected component, then rebuild every dependent artifact from clean inputs.
  • Adopt bounds-checked interfaces, validated sizes and integer conversions, clear ownership, and memory-safe components where practical.
  • Enable supported compiler and runtime hardening and add sanitized tests and fuzz regression seeds derived from non-weaponized fixtures.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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