What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-36691

• Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2023-03-24 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-674

Description

An issue was discovered in the Linux kernel before 5.8. lib/nlattr.c allows attackers to cause a denial of service (unbounded recursion) via a nested Netlink policy with a back reference.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: before 5.8 — fixed in 5.8

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.8. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v5.x/ChangeLog-5.8
• https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/7690aa1cdf7c4565ad6b013b324c28b685505e24
• https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v5.x/ChangeLog-5.8
• https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/7690aa1cdf7c4565ad6b013b324c28b685505e24

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