What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-4387: Kernel: vmxnet3: use-after-free in vmxnet3_rq_alloc_rx_buf()

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.1 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: 2023-08-16 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-416

Description

A use-after-free flaw was found in vmxnet3_rq_alloc_rx_buf in drivers/net/vmxnet3/vmxnet3_drv.c in VMware's vmxnet3 ethernet NIC driver in the Linux Kernel. This issue could allow a local attacker to crash the system due to a double-free while cleaning up vmxnet3_rq_cleanup_all, which could also lead to a kernel information leak problem.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: from 3.16.60 before 3.17; from 4.4 before 4.9.316; from 4.10 before 4.14.281; from 4.15 before 4.19.245; from 4.20 before 5.4.196; from 5.5 before 5.10.118 — fixed in 3.17, 4.14.281, 4.19.245, 4.9.316, 5.10.118, 5.15.42
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux: 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 3.17, 4.14.281, 4.19.245, 4.9.316. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2022:7683
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2022:8267
• https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-4387
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2219270
• https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/9e7fef9521e73ca8afd7da9e58c14654b02dfad8
• https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-4387
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2219270
• https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/9e7fef9521e73ca8afd7da9e58c14654b02dfad8

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