What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2009-1072

• Severity: medium (CVSS 4.9 v2.0)
• 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: 2009-03-25 · updated 2026-06-16
• Weakness: CWE-16

Description

nfsd in the Linux kernel before 2.6.28.9 does not drop the CAP_MKNOD capability before handling a user request in a thread, which allows local users to create device nodes, as demonstrated on a filesystem that has been exported with the root_squash option.

Affected products

• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 6.06, 8.04, 8.10, 9.04
• Debian Linux: 4.0, 5.0
• Linux kernel: before 2.6.28.9 — fixed in 2.6.28.9
• Opensuse: 10.3, 11.0, 11.1
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP1: 10-sp2
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server: 10-sp2
• VMware ESX: 3.0.3, 3.5, 4.0
• VMware Server: 2.0.0
• VMware vCenter Server: 4.0
• VMware Virtualcenter: 2.0.2, 2.5
• VMware Vma: 4.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 2.6.28.9. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commitdiff%3Bh=76a67ec6fb79ff3570dcb5342142c16098299911
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2009-04/msg00007.html
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2009-05/msg00002.html
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2009-06/msg00000.html
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2009-06/msg00001.html
• http://secunia.com/advisories/34422
• http://secunia.com/advisories/34432
• http://secunia.com/advisories/34786
• http://secunia.com/advisories/35121
• http://secunia.com/advisories/35185
• http://secunia.com/advisories/35343
• http://secunia.com/advisories/35390

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