CVE-2015-8963

Severity: high (CVSS 7.0 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2016-11-16 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-362

Description

Race condition in kernel/events/core.c in the Linux kernel before 4.4 allows local users to gain privileges or cause a denial of service (use-after-free) by leveraging incorrect handling of an swevent data structure during a CPU unplug operation.

Affected products

Linux kernel: before 3.2.85; from 3.3 before 3.16.40; from 3.17 before 3.18.54; from 3.19 before 4.4 — fixed in 3.16.40, 3.18.54, 3.2.85, 4.4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 3.16.40, 3.18.54, 3.2.85, 4.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=12ca6ad2e3a896256f086497a7c7406a547ee373
http://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2016-11-01.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/94207
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/12ca6ad2e3a896256f086497a7c7406a547ee373
http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=12ca6ad2e3a896256f086497a7c7406a547ee373
http://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2016-11-01.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/94207
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/12ca6ad2e3a896256f086497a7c7406a547ee373

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