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Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

CVE-2016-9793

High
7.8/10

Summary

The sock_setsockopt function in net/core/sock.c in the Linux kernel before 4.8.14 mishandles negative values of sk_sndbuf and sk_rcvbuf, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (memory corruption and system crash) or possibly have unspecified other impact by leveraging the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability for a crafted setsockopt system call with the (1) SO_SNDBUFFORCE or (2) SO_RCVBUFFORCE option.

  • LOW
  • LOCAL
  • HIGH
  • UNCHANGED
  • NONE
  • LOW
  • HIGH
  • HIGH

CWE-119 - Buffer Overflow

Buffer overflow attacks involve data transit and operations exceeding the restricted memory buffer, thereby corrupting or overwriting data in adjacent memory locations. Such overflow allows the attacker to run arbitrary code or manipulate the existing code to cause privilege escalation, data breach, denial of service, system crash and even complete system compromise. Given that languages such as C and C++ lack default safeguards against overwriting or accessing data in their memory, applications utilizing these languages are most susceptible to buffer overflows attacks.

References

Advisory Timeline

  • Published