CVE-2011-4081

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
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: 2012-05-24 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-476

Description

crypto/ghash-generic.c in the Linux kernel before 3.1 allows local users to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and OOPS) or possibly have unspecified other impact by triggering a failed or missing ghash_setkey function call, followed by a (1) ghash_update function call or (2) ghash_final function call, as demonstrated by a write operation on an AF_ALG socket.

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=7ed47b7d142ec99ad6880bbbec51e9f12b3af74c
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/ChangeLog-3.1
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/10/27/2
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=749475
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/7ed47b7d142ec99ad6880bbbec51e9f12b3af74c
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=7ed47b7d142ec99ad6880bbbec51e9f12b3af74c
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/ChangeLog-3.1
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/10/27/2
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=749475
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/7ed47b7d142ec99ad6880bbbec51e9f12b3af74c

Get alerted when CVE-2011-4081 or the next vulnerability affects your stack