CVE-2019-16994

Severity: medium (CVSS 4.7 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2019-09-30 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-401

Description

In the Linux kernel before 5.0, a memory leak exists in sit_init_net() in net/ipv6/sit.c when register_netdev() fails to register sitn->fb_tunnel_dev, which may cause denial of service, aka CID-07f12b26e21a.

Affected products

Linux kernel: before 5.0 — fixed in 5.0
openSUSE Leap: 15.1
Red Hat Enterprise Linux: 7.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-03/msg00021.html
https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=07f12b26e21ab359261bf75cfcb424fdc7daeb6d
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/07f12b26e21ab359261bf75cfcb424fdc7daeb6d
https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20191031-0005/
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-03/msg00021.html
https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=07f12b26e21ab359261bf75cfcb424fdc7daeb6d
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/07f12b26e21ab359261bf75cfcb424fdc7daeb6d
https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20191031-0005/

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