CVE-2010-4655

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 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: 2011-07-18 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-665

Description

net/core/ethtool.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.36 does not initialize certain data structures, which allows local users to obtain potentially sensitive information from kernel heap memory by leveraging the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability for an ethtool ioctl call.

Affected products

Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 8.04
Linux kernel: before 2.6.36 — fixed in 2.6.36
VMware ESX: 4.0, 4.1

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=b00916b189d13a615ff05c9242201135992fcda3
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/01/24/9
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/01/25/3
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/01/25/4
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/01/25/5
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/01/28/1
http://secunia.com/advisories/46397
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.36
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/520102/100/0/threaded
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/45972
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-1146-1
http://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2011-0012.html

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