CVE-2026-81627
HIGH 8.2 PoC AVAILABLEA flaw was found in QEMU. The VAPIC setup hypercall in hw/i386/vapic.c does not validate that the writable RAM alias remains within the option ROM window. A privileged guest user on a Q35/KVM machine can position this alias over locked SMRAM, bypassing chipset D_LCK protection and injecting code into System Management Mode memory.
Public exploit or PoC code exists. Modeled probability is still low, but the barrier to attack is reduced — watch closely.
Exploitation likelihood
0.2%chance of exploitation in 30 days · 8th percentile
Impact if exploited
8.2CVSS 3.1 · HIGH
- ConfidentialityHigh
- IntegrityHigh
- AvailabilityHigh
What an attacker needs
- ⚠Access: Requires local access to the host
- ⚠Privileges: Requires an admin / high-privilege account
- ✓User interaction: No user interaction needed
- ✓Complexity: No special conditions — reliably repeatable
✓ lowers the bar for an attacker · ⚠ raises it
Proof of concept & exploit code
- reference https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/work_items/4206
- github-search Search GitHub for public PoC repos
Test against your own equipment
curl -s https://vulnpedia.com/cve/CVE-2026-81627/poc.jsonMachine-readable PoC index for this CVE (for automation).Listed for defensive triage, patch verification, and authorized testing on systems you own. Machine-readable: /cve/CVE-2026-81627/poc.json
Affected
Vendors Red Hat
Products Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 Red Hat Enterprise Linux For Nvidia 26 Red Hat Openshift Container Platform 4 Red Hat Openstack Platform 13 (Queens)
Weakness (CWE)
- CWE-787: Out-of-bounds Write
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
All CVSS metrics
- HIGH 8.2 v3.1 · CNA Primary
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H - HIGH 8.2 v3.1 · NVD Primary
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H