CVE-2011-1082

Severity: medium (CVSS 4.9 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: 2011-04-04 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-400

Description

fs/eventpoll.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.38 places epoll file descriptors within other epoll data structures without properly checking for (1) closed loops or (2) deep chains, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (deadlock or stack memory consumption) via a crafted application that makes epoll_create and epoll_ctl system calls.

Affected products

Linux kernel: before 2.6.38 — fixed in 2.6.38

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 2.6.38. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=22bacca48a1755f79b7e0f192ddb9fbb7fc6e64e
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/03/02/1
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/03/02/2
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.38
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=681575
https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/2/5/220
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=22bacca48a1755f79b7e0f192ddb9fbb7fc6e64e
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/03/02/1
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/03/02/2
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.38
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=681575
https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/2/5/220

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