CVE-2018-12714

Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 5.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2018-06-24 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-787

Description

An issue was discovered in the Linux kernel through 4.17.2. The filter parsing in kernel/trace/trace_events_filter.c could be called with no filter, which is an N=0 case when it expected at least one line to have been read, thus making the N-1 index invalid. This allows attackers to cause a denial of service (slab out-of-bounds write) or possibly have unspecified other impact via crafted perf_event_open and mmap system calls.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 4.17 before 4.17.4 — fixed in 4.17.4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 4.17.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=81f9c4e4177d31ced6f52a89bb70e93bfb77ca03
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/104544
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200019
https://github.com/lcytxw/bug_repro/tree/master/bug_200019
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/81f9c4e4177d31ced6f52a89bb70e93bfb77ca03
http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=81f9c4e4177d31ced6f52a89bb70e93bfb77ca03
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/104544
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200019
https://github.com/lcytxw/bug_repro/tree/master/bug_200019
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/81f9c4e4177d31ced6f52a89bb70e93bfb77ca03

Get alerted when CVE-2018-12714 or the next vulnerability affects your stack