CVE-2016-9604

Severity: medium (CVSS 4.4 v3.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2018-07-11 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-732

Description

It was discovered in the Linux kernel before 4.11-rc8 that root can gain direct access to an internal keyring, such as '.dns_resolver' in RHEL-7 or '.builtin_trusted_keys' upstream, by joining it as its session keyring. This allows root to bypass module signature verification by adding a new public key of its own devising to the keyring.

Affected products

Linux kernel: through 4.11; 4.11-rc1, 4.11-rc2, 4.11-rc3, 4.11-rc4, 4.11-rc5, 4.11-rc6 (+1)

References

http://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-security/cve/2016/CVE-2016-9604.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/102135
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:1842
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:2077
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:2669
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1035576
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2016-9604
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=ee8f844e3c5a73b999edf733df1c529d6503ec2f
http://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-security/cve/2016/CVE-2016-9604.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/102135
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:1842
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:2077

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