Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-2243 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-2243 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-2243?
- Medium severity, with a CVSS score of 5.1, published 19 February 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Qemu <UNKNOWN>.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-2243?
- No fixed version is recorded yet. Check the vendor's advisory in the references below. If you run it, Junglewise drafts a mitigation that fits your setup and applies it once you approve, with senior security engineers behind it.
- How is CVE-2026-2243 attacked?
- It is attacked over the network or with local access.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-2243?
- Check whether you run Qemu at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.
Technical details
The vulnerability is an out-of-bounds read in QEMU's VMDK image parsing logic. When a specially crafted VMDK disk image is opened or processed by QEMU, the code reads beyond allocated buffer boundaries, resulting in either disclosure of 12 bytes of sensitive host memory or a denial of service via crash. The attack requires the attacker to either provide a malicious VMDK file to a victim or have the ability to place such a file where QEMU will open it. No authentication or special privileges are required to trigger the vulnerability once a malicious image is available. A patch is available and should be applied to affected QEMU installations.
Affected products
- QEMU QEMU <UNKNOWN>
Timeline
- 2026-02-19: disclosed