What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2016-9806

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
• 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: 2016-12-28 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-362

Description

Race condition in the netlink_dump function in net/netlink/af_netlink.c in the Linux kernel before 4.6.3 allows local users to cause a denial of service (double free) or possibly have unspecified other impact via a crafted application that makes sendmsg system calls, leading to a free operation associated with a new dump that started earlier than anticipated.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: from 3.12 before 3.12.62; from 3.13 before 3.14.73; from 3.15 before 3.16.37; from 3.17 before 3.18.37; from 3.19 before 4.1.28; from 4.2 before 4.4.14 — fixed in 3.12.62, 3.14.73, 3.16.37, 3.18.37, 4.1.28, 4.4.14

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 3.12.62, 3.14.73, 3.16.37, 3.18.37. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=92964c79b357efd980812c4de5c1fd2ec8bb5520
• http://lists.openwall.net/netdev/2016/05/15/69
• http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/ChangeLog-4.6.3
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/12/03/4
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/94653
• http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1037968
• 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.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1401502
• https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/92964c79b357efd980812c4de5c1fd2ec8bb5520
• https://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2017-03-01.html

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