CVE-2009-1046

Severity: medium (CVSS 4.7 v2.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2009-03-23 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-399

Description

The console selection feature in the Linux kernel 2.6.28 before 2.6.28.4, 2.6.25, and possibly earlier versions, when the UTF-8 console is used, allows physically proximate attackers to cause a denial of service (memory corruption) by selecting a small number of 3-byte UTF-8 characters, which triggers an "off-by-two memory error." NOTE: it is not clear whether this issue crosses privilege boundaries.

Affected products

Linux kernel: 2.6.25, 2.6.28, 2.6.28.1, 2.6.28.2, 2.6.28.3

References

http://lists.openwall.net/linux-kernel/2009/01/30/333
http://lists.openwall.net/linux-kernel/2009/02/02/364
http://secunia.com/advisories/34917
http://secunia.com/advisories/34981
http://secunia.com/advisories/35121
http://www.debian.org/security/2009/dsa-1787
http://www.debian.org/security/2009/dsa-1800
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.28.4
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2009/02/12/10
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2009/02/12/11
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2009/02/12/9
http://www.redhat.com/support/errata/RHSA-2009-0451.html

Get alerted when CVE-2009-1046 or the next vulnerability affects your stack