CVE-2016-3156

Related Vulnerabilities: CVE-2016-3156  

A security flaw was found in the Linux kernel's networking subsystem that destroying the network interface with huge number of ipv4 addresses assigned keeps "rtnl_lock" spinlock for a very long time (up to hour). This blocks many network-related operations, including creation of new incoming ssh connections. The problem is especially important for containers, as the container owner has enough permissions to trigger this and block a network access on a whole host, outside the container.

A security flaw was found in the Linux kernel's networking subsystem that destroying the network interface with huge number of ipv4 addresses assigned keeps "rtnl_lock" spinlock for a very long time (up to hour). This blocks many network-related operations, including creation of new incoming ssh connections. The problem is especially important for containers, as the container owner has enough permissions to trigger this and block a network access on a whole host, outside the container.

Find out more about CVE-2016-3156 from the MITRE CVE dictionary dictionary and NIST NVD.

Statement

This issue affects the Linux kernel packages as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6. This has been rated as having Moderate security impact and is not currently planned to be addressed in future updates, as the Linux containers which the flaw affects are not supported in these products. For additional information, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle: https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/.

This issue affects the Linux kernel packages as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and MRG-2. Future Linux kernel updates for the respective releases might address this issue.

CVSS v2 metrics

Base Score 1.7
Base Metrics AV:L/AC:L/Au:S/C:N/I:N/A:P
Access Vector Local
Access Complexity Low
Authentication Single
Confidentiality Impact None
Integrity Impact None
Availability Impact Partial

Find out more about Red Hat support for the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).

Red Hat Security Errata

Platform Errata Release Date
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Real Time for NFV (v. 7) (kernel-rt) RHSA-2016:2584 2016-11-03
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (kernel) RHSA-2016:2574 2016-11-03

Affected Packages State

Platform Package State
Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2 realtime-kernel Will not fix
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 kernel Will not fix
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 kernel Will not fix

Acknowledgements

Red Hat would like to thank the Virtuozzo kernel team and Solar Designer (Openwall) for reporting this issue.