CVE-2014-7970

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2014-10-13 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-400

Description

The pivot_root implementation in fs/namespace.c in the Linux kernel through 3.17 does not properly interact with certain locations of a chroot directory, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (mount-tree loop) via . (dot) values in both arguments to the pivot_root system call.

Affected products

Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 12.04, 14.04
Linux kernel: through 3.17
Novell Suse Linux Enterprise Server: 11.0-sp3

References

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2015-04/msg00015.html
http://secunia.com/advisories/60174
http://secunia.com/advisories/61142
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2014/10/08/21
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/70319
http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1030991
http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-fsdevel/msg79153.html
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-2419-1
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-2420-1
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-2513-1
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-2514-1
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:1842

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