CVE-2011-3638

Severity: medium (CVSS 4.0 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: 2013-03-01 · updated 2026-06-16

Description

fs/ext4/extents.c in the Linux kernel before 3.0 does not mark a modified extent as dirty in certain cases of extent splitting, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (system crash) via vectors involving ext4 umount and mount operations.

Affected products

Linux kernel: before 3.0 — fixed in 3.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 3.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/ChangeLog-3.0
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=667eff35a1f56fa74ce98a0c7c29a40adc1ba4e3
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/10/24/2
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=747942
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/667eff35a1f56fa74ce98a0c7c29a40adc1ba4e3
http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/ChangeLog-3.0
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=667eff35a1f56fa74ce98a0c7c29a40adc1ba4e3
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/10/24/2
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=747942
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/667eff35a1f56fa74ce98a0c7c29a40adc1ba4e3

Get alerted when CVE-2011-3638 or the next vulnerability affects your stack