What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2008-2931

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2008-07-09 · updated 2026-06-16
• Weakness: CWE-269

Description

The do_change_type function in fs/namespace.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.22 does not verify that the caller has the CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability, which allows local users to gain privileges or cause a denial of service by modifying the properties of a mountpoint.

Affected products

• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 6.06, 7.04, 7.10, 8.04
• Debian Linux: 4.0
• Linux kernel: before 2.6.22 — fixed in 2.6.22
• Novell Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop: 10.0-sp1, 10.0-sp2
• Novell Suse Linux Enterprise Server: 10.0-sp1, 10.0-sp2
• Opensuse: from 10.3 through 11.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 2.6.22. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commitdiff%3Bh=ee6f958291e2a768fd727e7a67badfff0b67711a
• http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.22
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2008-07/msg00007.html
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2008-07/msg00012.html
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2008-10/msg00003.html
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2008-11/msg00001.html
• http://secunia.com/advisories/30982
• http://secunia.com/advisories/31551
• http://secunia.com/advisories/31614
• http://secunia.com/advisories/32023
• http://secunia.com/advisories/32759
• http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1630

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