What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2016-9793

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 1.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2016-12-28 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-119

Description

The sock_setsockopt function in net/core/sock.c in the Linux kernel before 4.8.14 mishandles negative values of sk_sndbuf and sk_rcvbuf, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (memory corruption and system crash) or possibly have unspecified other impact by leveraging the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability for a crafted setsockopt system call with the (1) SO_SNDBUFFORCE or (2) SO_RCVBUFFORCE option.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: from 3.5 before 3.12.69; from 3.13 before 3.16.40; from 3.17 before 3.18.52; from 3.19 before 4.1.50; from 4.2 before 4.4.38; from 4.5 before 4.8.14 — fixed in 3.12.69, 3.16.40, 3.18.52, 4.1.50, 4.4.38, 4.8.14

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 3.12.69, 3.16.40, 3.18.52, 4.1.50. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=b98b0bc8c431e3ceb4b26b0dfc8db509518fb290
• http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/ChangeLog-4.8.14
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/12/03/1
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/94655
• http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1037968
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:0931
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:0932
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:0933
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1402013
• https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/b98b0bc8c431e3ceb4b26b0dfc8db509518fb290
• https://github.com/xairy/kernel-exploits/tree/master/CVE-2016-9793
• https://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2017-03-01.html

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