CVE-2011-4097

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: 2012-05-17 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-190

Description

Integer overflow in the oom_badness function in mm/oom_kill.c in the Linux kernel before 3.1.8 on 64-bit platforms allows local users to cause a denial of service (memory consumption or process termination) by using a certain large amount of memory.

Affected products

Linux kernel: before 3.1.8 — fixed in 3.1.8
Red Hat Enterprise Linux: 6.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 3.1.8. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/ChangeLog-3.1.8
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/11/01/2
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=750399
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/56c6a8a4aadca809e04276eabe5552935c51387f
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/ChangeLog-3.1.8
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/11/01/2
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=750399
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/56c6a8a4aadca809e04276eabe5552935c51387f

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