What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2016-9754

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2017-01-05 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-190

Description

The ring_buffer_resize function in kernel/trace/ring_buffer.c in the profiling subsystem in the Linux kernel before 4.6.1 mishandles certain integer calculations, which allows local users to gain privileges by writing to the /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/buffer_size_kb file.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: from 3.5 before 3.10.102; from 3.11 before 3.12.61; from 3.13 before 3.14.71; from 3.15 before 3.16.37; from 3.17 before 3.18.35; from 3.19 before 4.1.26 — fixed in 3.10.102, 3.12.61, 3.14.71, 3.16.37, 3.18.35, 4.1.26

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 3.10.102, 3.12.61, 3.14.71, 3.16.37. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=59643d1535eb220668692a5359de22545af579f6
• http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/ChangeLog-4.6.1
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/95278
• https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/59643d1535eb220668692a5359de22545af579f6
• https://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2017-01-01.html
• http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=59643d1535eb220668692a5359de22545af579f6
• http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/ChangeLog-4.6.1
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/95278
• https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/59643d1535eb220668692a5359de22545af579f6
• https://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2017-01-01.html

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