CVE-2012-6689

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2016-05-02 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-284

Description

The netlink_sendmsg function in net/netlink/af_netlink.c in the Linux kernel before 3.5.5 does not validate the dst_pid field, which allows local users to have an unspecified impact by spoofing Netlink messages.

Affected products

Linux kernel: before 3.0.44; from 3.1 before 3.2.30; from 3.3 before 3.4.12; from 3.5 before 3.5.5 — fixed in 3.0.44, 3.2.30, 3.4.12, 3.5.5

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 3.0.44, 3.2.30, 3.4.12, 3.5.5. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=20e1db19db5d6b9e4e83021595eab0dc8f107bef
http://marc.info/?l=linux-netdev&m=134522422125983&w=2
http://marc.info/?l=linux-netdev&m=134522422925986&w=2
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/ChangeLog-3.5.5
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2015/02/22/10
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/72739
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=848949
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/20e1db19db5d6b9e4e83021595eab0dc8f107bef
http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=20e1db19db5d6b9e4e83021595eab0dc8f107bef
http://marc.info/?l=linux-netdev&m=134522422125983&w=2
http://marc.info/?l=linux-netdev&m=134522422925986&w=2
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/ChangeLog-3.5.5

Get alerted when CVE-2012-6689 or the next vulnerability affects your stack