CVE-2018-14619

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: 2018-08-30 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-416

Description

A flaw was found in the crypto subsystem of the Linux kernel before version kernel-4.15-rc4. The "null skcipher" was being dropped when each af_alg_ctx was freed instead of when the aead_tfm was freed. This can cause the null skcipher to be freed while it is still in use leading to a local user being able to crash the system or possibly escalate privileges.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 4.14 before 4.14.8; 4.15-rc1, 4.15-rc2, 4.15-rc3 — fixed in 4.14.8

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 4.14.8. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/105200
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2018:2948
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2018-14619
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=b32a7dc8aef1882fbf983eb354837488cc9d54dc
https://psirt.global.sonicwall.com/vuln-detail/SNWLID-2018-0013
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/105200
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2018:2948
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2018-14619
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=b32a7dc8aef1882fbf983eb354837488cc9d54dc
https://psirt.global.sonicwall.com/vuln-detail/SNWLID-2018-0013

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