What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2011-1163

• Severity: low (CVSS 2.1 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: 2011-04-10 · updated 2026-06-16
• Weakness: CWE-20

Description

The osf_partition function in fs/partitions/osf.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.38 does not properly handle an invalid number of partitions, which might allow local users to obtain potentially sensitive information from kernel heap memory via vectors related to partition-table parsing.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: before 2.6.38 — fixed in 2.6.38
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Desktop: 5.0, 6.0
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Eus: 5.6
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Server: 5.0, 6.0
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Server Aus: 5.6
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Workstation: 5.0, 6.0
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server: 10-sp4

How to fix

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

References

• http://downloads.avaya.com/css/P8/documents/100145416
• http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=1eafbfeb7bdf59cfe173304c76188f3fd5f1fd05
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2015-04/msg00020.html
• http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/03/15/14
• http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/03/15/9
• http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2011-0833.html
• http://securityreason.com/securityalert/8189
• http://securitytracker.com/id?1025225
• http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.38
• http://www.pre-cert.de/advisories/PRE-SA-2011-02.txt
• http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/517050
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/46878

Get alerted when CVE-2011-1163 or the next vulnerability affects your stack