What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2011-2517

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.2 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: 2012-05-24 · updated 2026-06-16
• Weakness: CWE-119

Description

Multiple buffer overflows in net/wireless/nl80211.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.39.2 allow local users to gain privileges by leveraging the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability during scan operations with a long SSID value.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: before 2.6.39.2 — fixed in 2.6.39.2
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux: 5.0
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Desktop: 5.0
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Server: 5.0
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Workstation: 5.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 2.6.39.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.39.2
• http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=208c72f4fe44fe09577e7975ba0e7fa0278f3d03
• http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2011-1212.html
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/07/01/4
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=718152
• https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/208c72f4fe44fe09577e7975ba0e7fa0278f3d03
• http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.39.2
• http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=208c72f4fe44fe09577e7975ba0e7fa0278f3d03
• http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2011-1212.html
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/07/01/4
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=718152
• https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/208c72f4fe44fe09577e7975ba0e7fa0278f3d03

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