A flaw was found in KubeVirt's downward metrics virtio-serial server. The server reads guest requests using textproto.Reader.ReadLine(), which buffers input indefinitely until a newline character is received, with no length limit or read deadline. A user with access to a VM guest that has the downward metrics virtio-serial device configured can write a continuous byte stream to the device, causing unbounded memory allocation in the virt-handler process until it is OOM-killed.

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Fixes

Solution

No solution given by the vendor.


Workaround

The downward metrics virtio-serial device must be explicitly added to a VM's specification to be present. Clusters that do not use this feature are not exposed. To reduce exposure, administrators can restrict the ability to configure downward metrics devices on tenant VMs by using an admission webhook or policy controller such as Gatekeeper/OPA.

History

Fri, 26 Jun 2026 00:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description A flaw was found in KubeVirt's downward metrics virtio-serial server. The server reads guest requests using textproto.Reader.ReadLine(), which buffers input indefinitely until a newline character is received, with no length limit or read deadline. A user with access to a VM guest that has the downward metrics virtio-serial device configured can write a continuous byte stream to the device, causing unbounded memory allocation in the virt-handler process until it is OOM-killed.
Title Kubevirt: virt-handler-rhel9: kubevirt: unbounded virtio-serial readline in virt-handler causes oom denial of service
First Time appeared Redhat
Redhat container Native Virtualization
Weaknesses CWE-770
CPEs cpe:/a:redhat:container_native_virtualization:4
Vendors & Products Redhat
Redhat container Native Virtualization
References
Metrics threat_severity

None

cvssV3_1

{'score': 3.8, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:L'}

threat_severity

Low


Projects

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cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: redhat

Published:

Updated: 2026-06-26T00:04:07.651Z

Reserved: 2026-06-25T08:58:54.983Z

Link: CVE-2026-13322

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

No data.

cve-icon Redhat

Severity : Low

Publid Date: 2026-06-25T00:00:00Z

Links: CVE-2026-13322 - Bugzilla

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

No data.

Weaknesses