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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2017-1000255 json

On Linux running on PowerPC hardware (Power8 or later) a user process can craft a signal frame and then do a sigreturn so that the kernel w…

published 2017-10-30 9 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2017-1516

cvss
5.5
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 32%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

On Linux running on PowerPC hardware (Power8 or later) a user process can craft a signal frame and then do a sigreturn so that the kernel will take an exception (interrupt), and use the r1 value *from the signal frame* as the kernel stack pointer. As part of the exception entry the content of the signal frame is written to the kernel stack, allowing an attacker to overwrite arbitrary locations with arbitrary values. The exception handling does produce an oops, and a panic if panic_on_oops=1, but only after kernel memory has been over written. This flaw was introduced in commit: "5d176f751ee3 (powerpc: tm: Enable transactional memory (TM) lazily for userspace)" which was merged upstream into v4.9-rc1. Please note that kernels built with CONFIG_PPC_TRANSACTIONAL_MEM=n are not vulnerable.

Patch / fix

  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 4.13.4-2

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2017-1000255

  • linux-hwe Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 4.10.0-37.41~16.04.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2017-1000255

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

  • kernel-alt RHEL 7 4.14.0-49.el7a
  • perf RHEL 7 4.14.0-49.el7a
  • kernel RHEL 7 4.14.0-49.el7a
  • python-perf RHEL 7 4.14.0-49.el7a
  • kernel-kdump RHEL 7 4.14.0-49.el7a
  • kernel-tools RHEL 7 4.14.0-49.el7a
  • kernel-tools-libs RHEL 7 4.14.0-49.el7a
  • kernel-bootwrapper RHEL 7 4.14.0-49.el7a

red hat advisories RHSA-2018:0654

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-2017-1000255 updated cvss 6.1

kernel: Arbitrary stack overwrite causing oops via crafted signal frame

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ARM and IBM Power LE (POWER9) Server (v. 7) perf 4.14.0-49.el7a, kernel 4.14.0-49.el7a, kernel-alt 4.14.0-49.el7a, python-perf 4.14.0-49.el7a, kernel-kdump 4.14.0-49.el7a, kernel-tools 4.14.0-49.el7a, +6 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ARM and IBM Power LE (POWER9) Server Optional (v. 7) kernel-debuginfo-common-aarch64 4.14.0-49.el7a, kernel-debuginfo-common-ppc64le 4.14.0-49.el7a
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2018:0654
  • 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, 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

0.38% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 32% 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:H/A:N
NVD 2.0 6.6 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:C/A:C

Classification

Weakness
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.