What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2018-12233

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 2.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2018-06-12 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-119

Description

In the ea_get function in fs/jfs/xattr.c in the Linux kernel through 4.17.1, a memory corruption bug in JFS can be triggered by calling setxattr twice with two different extended attribute names on the same file. This vulnerability can be triggered by an unprivileged user with the ability to create files and execute programs. A kmalloc call is incorrect, leading to slab-out-of-bounds in jfs_xattr.

Affected products

• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 14.04, 16.04, 18.04
• Linux kernel: from 2.6.12 before 3.16.58; from 3.17 before 3.18.118; from 3.19 before 4.4.147; from 4.5 before 4.9.119; from 4.10 before 4.14.62; from 4.15 before 4.17.14 — fixed in 3.16.58, 3.18.118, 4.14.62, 4.17.14, 4.4.147, 4.9.119

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 3.16.58, 3.18.118, 4.14.62, 4.17.14. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/104452
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2018/07/msg00015.html
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2018/07/msg00016.html
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2018/07/msg00020.html
• https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/6/2/2
• https://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=152814391530549&w=2
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/3752-1/
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/3752-2/
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/3752-3/
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/3753-1/
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/3753-2/
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/3754-1/

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