CVE-2011-4077

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.9 v2.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2012-01-27 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-119

Description

Buffer overflow in the xfs_readlink function in fs/xfs/xfs_vnodeops.c in XFS in the Linux kernel 2.6, when CONFIG_XFS_DEBUG is disabled, allows local users to cause a denial of service (memory corruption and crash) and possibly execute arbitrary code via an XFS image containing a symbolic link with a long pathname.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 2.6.12 before 3.0.11; from 3.1 before 3.1.5 — fixed in 3.0.11, 3.1.5

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 3.0.11, 3.1.5. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://marc.info/?l=bugtraq&m=139447903326211&w=2
http://oss.sgi.com/archives/xfs/2011-10/msg00345.html
http://secunia.com/advisories/48964
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/10/26/1
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/10/26/3
http://xorl.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/cve-2011-4077-linux-kernel-xfs-readlink-memory-corruption/
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=749156
http://marc.info/?l=bugtraq&m=139447903326211&w=2
http://oss.sgi.com/archives/xfs/2011-10/msg00345.html
http://secunia.com/advisories/48964
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/10/26/1
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/10/26/3

Get alerted when CVE-2011-4077 or the next vulnerability affects your stack