CVE-2015-8955

Severity: high (CVSS 7.3 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2016-10-10 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-264

Description

arch/arm64/kernel/perf_event.c in the Linux kernel before 4.1 on arm64 platforms allows local users to gain privileges or cause a denial of service (invalid pointer dereference) via vectors involving events that are mishandled during a span of multiple HW PMUs.

Affected products

Android: 7.0
Linux kernel: before 3.16.39; from 3.18 before 3.18.54; from 3.19 before 4.1 — fixed in 3.16.39, 3.18.54, 4.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 3.16.39, 3.18.54, 4.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=8fff105e13041e49b82f92eef034f363a6b1c071
http://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2016-10-01.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/93314
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/8fff105e13041e49b82f92eef034f363a6b1c071
http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=8fff105e13041e49b82f92eef034f363a6b1c071
http://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2016-10-01.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/93314
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/8fff105e13041e49b82f92eef034f363a6b1c071

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