CVE-2023-5088: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 · Incorrect Synchronization
Affects Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8Source CVE Database V5
Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.4 Medium.
Data as of 25 Oct 2026, 19:02 UTC
- EPSS
- 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 14% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HExploitation evidence
Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 3 Nov 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 2026-10-25.
What to do
AI-suggested
1. Apply official patches from Red Hat as soon as they become available to address the synchronization bug in QEMU. 2. Restrict and monitor access to Level 2 guest VMs, ensuring that only trusted users have high privilege access to nested virtualization environments. 3. Implement strict role-based access controls (RBAC) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all users with hypervisor or VM management privileges. 4. Limit or avoid the use of nested virtualization where possible, especially in sensitive or production environments. 5. Employ runtime monitoring and anomaly detection tools to identify unusual disk I/O patterns or attempts to access LBA 0 unexpectedly. 6. Regularly audit virtualization infrastructure configurations and logs to detect potential exploitation attempts. 7. Use hardware-assisted virtualization security features such as Intel VT-x or AMD-V with appropriate security extensions enabled. 8. Segment virtualized environments to reduce the blast radius in case of compromise. 9. Maintain up-to-date backups of hypervisor and VM images to enable recovery if boot code is corrupted. 10. Engage with Red Hat support and security advisories to stay informed about updates and mitigations related to this vulnerability.
Description
A bug in QEMU could cause a guest I/O operation otherwise addressed to an arbitrary disk offset to be targeted to offset 0 instead (potentially overwriting the VM's boot code). This could be used, for example, by L2 guests with a virtual disk (vdiskL2) stored on a virtual disk of an L1 (vdiskL1) hypervisor to read and/or write data to LBA 0 of vdiskL1, potentially gaining control of L1 at its next reboot.
References
- access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2024:2135 (opens in a new tab)
- access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2024:2962 (opens in a new tab)
- access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-5088 (opens in a new tab)
- bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2247283 (opens in a new tab)
- lore.kernel.org/all/20230921160712.99521-1-simon.rowe@nutanix.com/T/ (opens in a new tab)
- lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2024/03/msg00012.html (opens in a new tab)
- security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20231208-0005/ (opens in a new tab)
- lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/04/msg00042.html (opens in a new tab)