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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2016-2550 json

The Linux kernel before 4.5 allows local users to bypass file-descriptor limits and cause a denial of service (memory consumption) by lever…

published 2016-04-27 10 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2016-3626

cvss
5.5
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.5%
EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 43%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The Linux kernel before 4.5 allows local users to bypass file-descriptor limits and cause a denial of service (memory consumption) by leveraging incorrect tracking of descriptor ownership and sending each descriptor over a UNIX socket before closing it. NOTE: this vulnerability exists because of an incorrect fix for CVE-2013-4312.

Patch / fix

  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 4.4.4-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2016-2550

  • linux Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 3.13.0-85.129
  • linux-lts-wily Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 4.2.0-35.40~14.04.1
  • linux-lts-vivid Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 3.19.0-58.64~14.04.1
  • linux-lts-utopic Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 3.16.0-69.89~14.04.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2016-2550

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2016-2550 updated cvss 4.9

kernel: incorrectly accounted in-flight fds

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 kernel
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2 kernel-rt, mrg-rt-release, kernel-rt-trace, kernel-rt-vanilla, kernel-rt-firmware
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.51% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 43% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 5.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 4.9 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-399 Resource Management Errors
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.