What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2010-3858

• Severity: medium (CVSS 4.9 v2.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.9% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2010-11-30 · updated 2026-06-16
• Weakness: CWE-400

Description

The setup_arg_pages function in fs/exec.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.36, when CONFIG_STACK_GROWSDOWN is used, does not properly restrict the stack memory consumption of the (1) arguments and (2) environment for a 32-bit application on a 64-bit platform, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (system crash) via a crafted exec system call, a related issue to CVE-2010-2240.

Affected products

• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 9.10, 10.04, 10.10
• Debian Linux: 5.0
• Linux kernel: before 2.6.36 — fixed in 2.6.36

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 2.6.36. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=1b528181b2ffa14721fb28ad1bd539fe1732c583
• http://grsecurity.net/~spender/64bit_dos.c
• http://secunia.com/advisories/42758
• http://secunia.com/advisories/42789
• http://secunia.com/advisories/46397
• http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2126
• http://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/15619
• http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.36
• http://www.mandriva.com/security/advisories?name=MDVSA-2010:257
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2010/10/21/1
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2010/10/22/4
• http://www.redhat.com/support/errata/RHSA-2010-0958.html

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