Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
high 7.8

CVE-2020-29534 json

An issue was discovered in the Linux kernel before 5.9.3.

published 2020-12-03 5 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2020-21900

cvss
7.8
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.5%
EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 40%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

An issue was discovered in the Linux kernel before 5.9.3. io_uring takes a non-refcounted reference to the files_struct of the process that submitted a request, causing execve() to incorrectly optimize unshare_fd(), aka CID-0f2122045b94.

Patch / fix

  • linux linux_kernel 5.8.18, 5.9.3
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 5.9.6-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2020-29534

  • linux-hwe-5.8 Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.8.0-34.37~20.04.2

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2020-29534

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-2020-29534 updated cvss 0.0

kernel: io_uring takes a non-refcounted reference to the files_struct of the process that submitted a request, causing execve() to incorrectly optimize unshare_fd() allowing for privileges escalation

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 kernel 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, kernel-alt, python-perf, +9 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more
    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

0.46% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 40% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • bugs.chromium.org https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=2089 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 7.2 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Classification

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.