What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2016-7914

• Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 2.0% 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-125

Description

The assoc_array_insert_into_terminal_node function in lib/assoc_array.c in the Linux kernel before 4.5.3 does not check whether a slot is a leaf, which allows local users to obtain sensitive information from kernel memory or cause a denial of service (invalid pointer dereference and out-of-bounds read) via an application that uses associative-array data structures, as demonstrated by the keyutils test suite.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: through 4.5.2

References

• http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=8d4a2ec1e0b41b0cf9a0c5cd4511da7f8e4f3de2
• http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-2574.html
• http://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2016-11-01.html
• http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/ChangeLog-4.5.3
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/94138
• https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/8d4a2ec1e0b41b0cf9a0c5cd4511da7f8e4f3de2
• http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=8d4a2ec1e0b41b0cf9a0c5cd4511da7f8e4f3de2
• http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-2574.html
• http://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2016-11-01.html
• http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/ChangeLog-4.5.3
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/94138
• https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/8d4a2ec1e0b41b0cf9a0c5cd4511da7f8e4f3de2

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