Vulnerability · Published Sep 29, 2026 · Assigned by redhat

CVE-2026-102623Kubevirt: kubevirt: virt-controller nil-pointer dereference via malformed ephemeral volume

Medium 6.5

In plain English

A medium-severity null pointer dereference in Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization 4 from Red Hat. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.3% (higher than 24% of all known vulnerabilities).

Severity (CVSS 3.1)6.5Medium

Exploit odds (30 days)0.3%top 76.4% of all CVEs

Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: none

Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

A flaw was found in KubeVirt. An authenticated user with permission to create Virtual Machine Instances (VMIs) can cause a Denial of Service (DoS) by submitting a virtual machine definition with an empty ephemeral volume. The virt-controller component fails to properly validate the volume configuration, leading to an unhandled exception and application crash during processing. Because the malformed definition persists in the cluster, the controller enters a continuous crash loop, disrupting virtual machine lifecycle operations across the entire environment.

Affected products (as reported)

Vendor	Product	Versions
Red Hat	Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization 4	see references
Red Hat	Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization 4	see references

Weakness: CWE-476 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

References

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-102623 vdb-entry, x_refsource_REDHAT
RHBZ#2543219 issue-tracking, x_refsource_REDHAT