CVE-2011-2189

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 17.9% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2011-10-10 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-400

Description

net/core/net_namespace.c in the Linux kernel 2.6.32 and earlier does not properly handle a high rate of creation and cleanup of network namespaces, which makes it easier for remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) via requests to a daemon that requires a separate namespace per connection, as demonstrated by vsftpd.

Affected products

Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 10.04, 10.10, 11.04, 11.10
Debian Linux: 5.0, 6.0, 7.0
Linux kernel: through 2.6.32
Red Hat Enterprise Linux: 6.0
RedHat Enterprise Mrg: 2.0

References

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=629373
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=2b035b39970740722598f7a9d548835f9bdd730f
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=f875bae065334907796da12523f9df85c89f5712
http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.33
http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/git-commits-head/2009/12/8/15289
http://neil.brown.name/git?p=linux-2.6%3Ba=patch%3Bh=2b035b39970740722598f7a9d548835f9bdd730f
http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/88217/
http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2305
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/06/06/10
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/06/06/20
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-1288-1
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/720095

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