What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2017-2616
- Severity: medium (CVSS 4.7 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: 2018-07-27 · updated 2026-06-17
- Weakness: CWE-267
Description
A race condition was found in util-linux before 2.32.1 in the way su handled the management of child processes. A local authenticated attacker could use this flaw to kill other processes with root privileges under specific conditions.
Affected products
- Debian Linux: 8.0
- RedHat Enterprise Linux Desktop: 6.0, 7.0
- RedHat Enterprise Linux Server: 6.0, 7.0
- RedHat Enterprise Linux Server Aus: 7.3, 7.4
- RedHat Enterprise Linux Server Eus: 7.3, 7.4, 7.5
- RedHat Enterprise Linux Workstation: 6.0, 7.0
- Util-Linux Project Util-Linux: before 2.32.1 — fixed in 2.32.1
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: Util-Linux Project Util-Linux 2.32.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
- http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017-0654.html
- http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/96404
- http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1038271
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:0907
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2017-2616
- https://github.com/karelzak/util-linux/commit/dffab154d29a288aa171ff50263ecc8f2e14a891
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201706-02
- https://www.debian.org/security/2017/dsa-3793
- http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017-0654.html
- http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/96404
- http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1038271
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:0907
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