What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-3269: Distros-[dirtyvma] privilege escalation via non-rcu-protected vma traversal

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 1.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2023-07-11 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-416

Description

A vulnerability exists in the memory management subsystem of the Linux kernel. The lock handling for accessing and updating virtual memory areas (VMAs) is incorrect, leading to use-after-free problems. This issue can be successfully exploited to execute arbitrary kernel code, escalate containers, and gain root privileges.

Affected products

• Fedoraproject Fedora: 37, 38
• Linux kernel: from 6.1 before 6.1.37; from 6.2 before 6.3.11; 6.4, 6.4-rc1, 6.4-rc2, 6.4-rc3, 6.4-rc4, 6.4-rc5 (+2) — fixed in 6.1.37, 6.3.11
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux: 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.1.37, 6.3.11. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2023/Jul/43
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/07/28/1
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/08/25/1
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/08/25/4
• https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-3269
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2215268
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/U6AAA64CUPSMBW6XDTXPQJ3KQWYQ4K7L/
• https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20230908-0001/
• https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/07/05/1
• http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2023/Jul/43
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/07/28/1
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/08/25/1

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