VulnerabilityPublished 10 May 2024Updated 8 Nov 2025

CVE-2024-4693: Operation on a Resource after Expiration or Release

Source CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 5.5 Medium.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 14:05 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

5.5Medium

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

EPSS: 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 25% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

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

Attack Vector: Local
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: 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: 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 10 May 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 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

Monitor QEMU and Virtio PCI component updates closely and apply patches promptly once available from QEMU or Linux distribution vendors.
Restrict guest VM privileges to the minimum necessary to reduce the risk of a malicious guest triggering the vulnerability.
Implement strict access controls and monitoring on guest VMs to detect suspicious activity that might indicate attempts to exploit this flaw.
Consider isolating critical workloads on separate hosts or using alternative virtualization technologies until patches are applied.
Use security features such as SELinux or AppArmor to limit the impact of a QEMU process crash.
Regularly back up critical virtual machine data and configurations to enable rapid recovery from host crashes.
Engage with cloud or virtualization platform providers to understand their mitigation strategies if using managed services.
Conduct internal security assessments to identify any guests with elevated privileges that could exploit this vulnerability.

Description

A flaw was found in the QEMU Virtio PCI Bindings (hw/virtio/virtio-pci.c). An improper release and use of the irqfd for vector 0 during the boot process leads to a guest triggerable crash via vhost_net_stop(). This flaw allows a malicious guest to crash the QEMU process on the host.

Impact

The primary impact of CVE-2024-4693 is a denial of service on the host running QEMU, caused by a crash of the QEMU process. This can disrupt services hosted on the virtualized infrastructure, leading to downtime and potential operational disruptions. Organizations relying on QEMU for virtualization, especially those using Virtio PCI devices, may experience instability or outages if a malicious or compromised guest exploits this flaw. While the vulnerability does not allow data theft or privilege escalation, the availability impact can be significant in multi-tenant environments such as cloud providers, hosting providers, and enterprise data centers. The requirement for local guest privileges limits the attack surface to users or attackers who already have some level of access within a guest VM, but this is a realistic scenario in shared environments. The lack of known exploits reduces immediate risk, but the medium severity score indicates that timely mitigation is important to prevent potential exploitation as attackers develop techniques.

References

Community reviews

Loading reviews…