VulnerabilityPublished 21 Mar 2024Updated 25 Feb 2026

CVE-2024-2494: libvirt · Excessive Memory Allocation

Affects libvirtSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.2 Medium.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 09:08 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

6.2Medium

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

EPSS: 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 30% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

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

Attack Vector: Local
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: None
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: Local: The vulnerable component is not bound to the network stack and the attacker’s path is via read/write/execute capabilities. Either: the attacker exploits the vulnerability by accessing the target system locally (e.g., keyboard, console), or remotely (e.g., SSH); or the attacker relies on User Interaction by another person to perform actions required to exploit the vulnerability (e.g., tricking a legitimate user into opening a malicious document).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files to carry out an attack.
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 21 Mar 2024
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 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

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
Debiandebian/libvirt`pkg:deb/debian/libvirt`Other threats	Affected =9.0.0	Fixed in–

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

To mitigate CVE-2024-2494, organizations should apply patches or updates from libvirt maintainers as soon as they become available, specifically targeting version 9.0.0. In the absence of an official patch, administrators should restrict local user access to systems running libvirt daemons to trusted personnel only, minimizing the risk of exploitation. Implementing strict access controls and monitoring for unusual libvirt daemon crashes can help detect attempted exploitation. Additionally, consider running libvirt services with reduced privileges and employing containerization or sandboxing techniques to limit the impact of a crash. Reviewing and hardening RPC API usage and input validation in custom integrations with libvirt can further reduce risk. Regularly auditing and updating virtualization infrastructure components is critical to maintaining security posture.

Description

A flaw was found in the RPC library APIs of libvirt. The RPC server deserialization code allocates memory for arrays before the non-negative length check is performed by the C API entry points. Passing a negative length to the g_new0 function results in a crash due to the negative length being treated as a huge positive number. This flaw allows a local, unprivileged user to perform a denial of service attack by causing the libvirt daemon to crash.

Impact

The primary impact of CVE-2024-2494 is a denial of service condition caused by crashing the libvirt daemon. This can disrupt virtualization management services, potentially affecting the availability of virtual machines and related infrastructure. Organizations relying on libvirt for managing virtual environments may experience service interruptions, degraded performance, or loss of control over virtual resources until the daemon is restarted. Since exploitation requires local access, the risk is higher in multi-tenant or shared environments where unprivileged users have shell or command execution capabilities. Although the vulnerability does not affect confidentiality or integrity, the availability impact can be significant in production environments, leading to operational downtime and potential cascading effects on dependent services. The lack of known exploits reduces immediate risk but does not eliminate the threat, especially in environments with untrusted local users.

References

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 27 Feb 2026, 09:24 UTC

Technical details

References

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