CVE-2018-17160 — In FreeBSD before 11

In FreeBSD before 11.2-STABLE(r341486) and 11.2-RELEASE-p6, insufficient bounds checking in one of the device models provided by bhyve can permit a guest operating system to overwrite memory in the bhyve host possibly permitting arbitrary code execution. A guest OS using a firmwa

01What is this vulnerability?

In FreeBSD before 11.2-STABLE(r341486) and 11.2-RELEASE-p6, insufficient bounds checking in one of the device models provided by bhyve can permit a guest operating system to overwrite memory in the bhyve host possibly permitting arbitrary code execution. A guest OS using a firmware image can cause the bhyve process to crash, or possibly execute arbitrary code on the host as root.

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
FreeBSD	FreeBSD	FreeBSD 11.2 before 11.2-RELEASE-p6

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2018-12-04T21:00:00.000Z
• Last modified: 2024-08-05T10:39:59.583Z

09References

• security.freebsd.org — https://security.freebsd.org/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-18:14.bhyve.asc
• www.securityfocus.com — http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/106210