CVE-2012-6638

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v2.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 3.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2014-02-15 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-400

Description

The tcp_rcv_state_process function in net/ipv4/tcp_input.c in the Linux kernel before 3.2.24 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (kernel resource consumption) via a flood of SYN+FIN TCP packets, a different vulnerability than CVE-2012-2663.

Affected products

Linux kernel: before 3.0.38; from 3.1 before 3.2.24 — fixed in 3.0.38, 3.2.24

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 3.0.38, 3.2.24. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=fdf5af0daf8019cec2396cdef8fb042d80fe71fa
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/ChangeLog-3.2.24
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=826702
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/fdf5af0daf8019cec2396cdef8fb042d80fe71fa
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=fdf5af0daf8019cec2396cdef8fb042d80fe71fa
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/ChangeLog-3.2.24
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=826702
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/fdf5af0daf8019cec2396cdef8fb042d80fe71fa

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