QEMU VMDK OOB Read Leak or DoS
CVE-2026-2243 Published on February 19, 2026

Qemu-kvm: heap buffer out-of-bounds read in vmdk compressed grain parsing
A flaw was found in QEMU. A specially crafted VMDK image could trigger an out-of-bounds read vulnerability, potentially leading to a 12-byte leak of sensitive information or a denial of service condition (DoS).

NVD

Vulnerability Analysis

CVE-2026-2243 can be exploited with local system access, and does not require authorization privileges or user interaction. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to have a small impact on confidentiality, a small impact on integrity, and a small impact on availability.

Attack Vector:
LOCAL
Attack Complexity:
LOW
Privileges Required:
NONE
User Interaction:
NONE
Scope:
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact:
LOW
Integrity Impact:
NONE
Availability Impact:
LOW

Timeline

Reported to Red Hat.

Made public.

Weakness Type

Out-of-bounds Read

The software reads data past the end, or before the beginning, of the intended buffer. Typically, this can allow attackers to read sensitive information from other memory locations or cause a crash. A crash can occur when the code reads a variable amount of data and assumes that a sentinel exists to stop the read operation, such as a NUL in a string. The expected sentinel might not be located in the out-of-bounds memory, causing excessive data to be read, leading to a segmentation fault or a buffer overflow. The software may modify an index or perform pointer arithmetic that references a memory location that is outside of the boundaries of the buffer. A subsequent read operation then produces undefined or unexpected results.


Products Associated with CVE-2026-2243

You can be notified by email with stack.watch whenever vulnerabilities like CVE-2026-2243 are published in these products:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
 
Red Hat Openshift
 

Affected Versions

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4:

Exploit Probability

EPSS
0.01%
Percentile
1.93%

EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) scores estimate the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. The percentile shows you how this score compares to all other vulnerabilities.