CVE-2020-14381

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2020-12-03 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-416

Description

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel’s futex implementation. This flaw allows a local attacker to corrupt system memory or escalate their privileges when creating a futex on a filesystem that is about to be unmounted. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to confidentiality, integrity, as well as system availability.

Affected products

Linux kernel: before 5.6; 5.6, 5.6-rc1, 5.6-rc2, 5.6-rc3, 5.6-rc4, 5.6-rc5 — fixed in 5.6

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.6. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1874311
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=8019ad13ef7f64be44d4f892af9c840179009254
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1874311
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=8019ad13ef7f64be44d4f892af9c840179009254

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