What is CVE-2014-8481?

CVE-2014-8481 is a Medium severity Linux kernel vulnerability with a CVSS score of 4.9 out of 10. CVE-2014-8481 has not been confirmed as actively exploited and is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

What is the CVSS score for CVE-2014-8481?

CVE-2014-8481 has a CVSS score of 4.9 out of 10, rated Medium severity. The vector string is AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C.

Is there a patch available for CVE-2014-8481?

No patch is currently available for CVE-2014-8481. Monitor the NIST NVD and your Linux distribution's security advisories for updates.

Is CVE-2014-8481 actively exploited?

CVE-2014-8481 has not been confirmed as actively exploited and is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

CVE-2014-8481

Medium

The instruction decoder in arch/x86/kvm/emulate.c in the KVM subsystem in the Linux kernel before 3.18-rc2 does not properly handle invalid instructions, which allows guest OS users to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and host OS crash) via a crafted application that triggers (1) an improperly fetched instruction or (2) an instruction that occupies too many bytes. NOTE: this vulnerability exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2014-8480.

Package Linux Kernel

Published 2014-11-10

Last modified 2026-05-06

CVSS version 2.0

Patch available

Awaiting data

CVSS 2.0 score

4.9

out of 10

Medium

Attack Vector

Local

Attack Complexity

Low

Privileges Required

User Interaction

Scope

Confidentiality

Low

Integrity

None

Availability

Vector string

AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C

Weakness type

CWE-399

CVE-2014-8481 is classified as CWE-399

See CWE-399 on MITRE CWE for full details on this weakness type.

References

The following references provide additional information about CVE-2014-8481 including vendor advisories, patch commits, exploit details, and third-party analysis. Links are sourced from the NIST NVD database.

Secunia
http://secunia.com/advisories/62042
Thread
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.kvm.devel/128427
Openwall
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2014/10/23/7

Exploit
Red Hat
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1156615
Kernel patch commit
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=a430c9166312e1aa3d80bce32374233bdbfeba32
Patch
Kernel patch commit
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/a430c9166312e1aa3d80bce32374233bdbfeba32
Patch

Details

CVE ID CVE-2014-8481

Severity Medium

CVSS score 4.9 / 10

CVSS version 2.0

Published 2014-11-10

Modified 2026-05-06

KEV No

Patch Awaiting data

Package linux

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2014-8481?

CVE-2014-8481 is a Medium severity Linux kernel vulnerability with a CVSS score of 4.9 out of 10 . CVE-2014-8481 has not been confirmed as actively exploited and is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
What is the CVSS score for CVE-2014-8481?

CVE-2014-8481 has a CVSS score of 4.9 out of 10, rated Medium severity (CVSS 2.0). The vector string is AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C.
Is there a patch available for CVE-2014-8481?

No patch is currently available for CVE-2014-8481. Monitor the NIST NVD and your Linux distribution's security advisories for updates.
Is CVE-2014-8481 actively exploited?

No — CVE-2014-8481 has not been confirmed as actively exploited. It is not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog.