VulnerabilityPublished 24 Jul 2023Updated 8 Nov 2025

CVE-2023-3750: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 · Improper Locking

Affects Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9Source CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.5 Medium.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 10:12 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

6.5Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 55% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: None
Availability: High

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: Low: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide basic user capabilities that could normally affect only settings and files owned by a user. Alternatively, an attacker with Low privileges may have the ability to cause an impact only to non-sensitive resources.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 24 Jul 2023
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

AI-suggested

To mitigate CVE-2023-3750, organizations should promptly apply any patches or updates released by Red Hat addressing this improper locking issue in libvirt. If patches are not yet available, consider implementing temporary workarounds such as limiting concurrent access to libvirt's read-only socket or restricting multi-threaded operations that interact with storage pools. Monitoring libvirt daemon logs for crashes or unusual behavior can help detect exploitation attempts early. Additionally, enforce strict access controls and limit privileges for users and services interacting with libvirt to reduce the attack surface. Regularly audit virtualization management configurations to ensure adherence to security best practices. For environments using orchestration tools or automation scripts that interact with libvirt, review and update them to avoid triggering race conditions. Finally, maintain an incident response plan to quickly recover from potential denial of service events affecting virtualization infrastructure.

Description

A flaw was found in libvirt. The virStoragePoolObjListSearch function does not return a locked pool as expected, resulting in a race condition and denial of service when attempting to lock the same object from another thread. This issue could allow clients connecting to the read-only socket to crash the libvirt daemon.

Impact

For European organizations, this vulnerability primarily threatens the availability of virtualization infrastructure managed via libvirt on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9. Organizations heavily reliant on virtualized environments for critical applications, cloud services, or internal infrastructure could experience service interruptions or downtime if the libvirt daemon crashes. This could affect data center operations, cloud service providers, and enterprises using virtualization for workload consolidation. Although the vulnerability does not expose data confidentiality or integrity, the denial of service could impact business continuity and operational efficiency. The risk is heightened in environments with multi-threaded access to storage pools or where multiple clients connect to libvirt's read-only socket. Given the widespread use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in European enterprises and public sector organizations, especially in Germany, France, and the UK, the potential impact is significant. Disruptions could also affect managed service providers and cloud platforms operating in Europe that use Red Hat virtualization stacks.

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 8 Nov 2025, 07:45 UTC

Technical details

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