CVE-2011-1171

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: 2011-06-22 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-200

Description

net/ipv4/netfilter/ip_tables.c in the IPv4 implementation in the Linux kernel before 2.6.39 does not place the expected '\0' character at the end of string data in the values of certain structure members, which allows local users to obtain potentially sensitive information from kernel memory by leveraging the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability to issue a crafted request, and then reading the argument to the resulting modprobe process.

Affected products

Linux kernel: through 2.6.38.8; 2.6.0, 2.6.1, 2.6.1-rc1, 2.6.1-rc2, 2.6.1-rc3, 2.6.2 (+667)

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=78b79876761b86653df89c48a7010b5cbd41a84a
http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=129978077609894&w=2
http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2011-0833.html
http://securityreason.com/securityalert/8278
http://securityreason.com/securityalert/8283
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.39
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/03/18/15
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/03/21/1
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/03/21/4
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=689327
http://downloads.avaya.com/css/P8/documents/100145416

Get alerted when CVE-2011-1171 or the next vulnerability affects your stack