CVE-2016-7916

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.4% 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 the environ_read function in fs/proc/base.c in the Linux kernel before 4.5.4 allows local users to obtain sensitive information from kernel memory by reading a /proc/*/environ file during a process-setup time interval in which environment-variable copying is incomplete.

Affected products

Linux kernel: through 4.5.3

References

http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=8148a73c9901a8794a50f950083c00ccf97d43b3
http://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2016-11-01.html
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/ChangeLog-4.5.4
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/94138
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-3159-1
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-3159-2
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=116461
https://forums.grsecurity.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4363
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/8148a73c9901a8794a50f950083c00ccf97d43b3
http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=8148a73c9901a8794a50f950083c00ccf97d43b3
http://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2016-11-01.html
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/ChangeLog-4.5.4

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