CVE-2011-2707

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.0 v3.1)
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-200

Description

The ptrace_setxregs function in arch/xtensa/kernel/ptrace.c in the Linux kernel before 3.1 does not validate user-space pointers, which allows local users to obtain sensitive information from kernel memory locations via a crafted PTRACE_SETXTREGS request.

Affected products

Linux kernel: before 3.1 — fixed in 3.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 3.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=0d0138ebe24b94065580bd2601f8bb7eb6152f56
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/ChangeLog-3.1
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/07/20/18
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/0d0138ebe24b94065580bd2601f8bb7eb6152f56
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=0d0138ebe24b94065580bd2601f8bb7eb6152f56
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/ChangeLog-3.1
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/07/20/18
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/0d0138ebe24b94065580bd2601f8bb7eb6152f56

Get alerted when CVE-2011-2707 or the next vulnerability affects your stack