CVE-2016-9120

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2016-12-08 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-264

Description

Race condition in the ion_ioctl function in drivers/staging/android/ion/ion.c in the Linux kernel before 4.6 allows local users to gain privileges or cause a denial of service (use-after-free) by calling ION_IOC_FREE on two CPUs at the same time.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 3.14 before 3.16.40; from 3.17 before 3.18.51; from 3.19 before 4.1.41; from 4.2 before 4.4.65; from 4.5 before 4.6 — fixed in 3.16.40, 3.18.51, 4.1.41, 4.4.65, 4.6

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 3.16.40, 3.18.51, 4.1.41, 4.4.65. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=9590232bb4f4cc824f3425a6e1349afbe6d6d2b7
http://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2016-12-01.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/94669
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/9590232bb4f4cc824f3425a6e1349afbe6d6d2b7
http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=9590232bb4f4cc824f3425a6e1349afbe6d6d2b7
http://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2016-12-01.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/94669
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/9590232bb4f4cc824f3425a6e1349afbe6d6d2b7

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