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Fencer Intel
high 7.5

CVE-2011-2189 in the critical feed json

net/core/net_namespace.c in the Linux kernel 2.6.32 and earlier does not properly handle a high rate of creation and cleanup of network nam…

published 2011-10-10 15 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2011-2180

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
17.9%
EPSS 17.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 97%
public exploits
1
Exploit-DB

Summary

net/core/net_namespace.c in the Linux kernel 2.6.32 and earlier does not properly handle a high rate of creation and cleanup of network namespaces, which makes it easier for remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) via requests to a daemon that requires a separate namespace per connection, as demonstrated by vsftpd.

Patch / fix

  • vsftpd Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.3.4-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2011-2189

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-2011-2189 updated cvss 4.6

kernel: net_ns: oom killer fires because of slow net_ns cleanup

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2 kernel-rt, mrg-rt-release, kernel-rt-trace, kernel-rt-vanilla, kernel-rt-firmware
    affected: no fix available
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 kernel
    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

Timeline

  1. Published
  2. First public exploit (EDB-36425)

Exploit prediction

17.85% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 97% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • EDB-36425 Linux Kernel 2.6.35 - Network Namespace Remote Denial of Service dos, 2011-12-06
  • bugzilla.redhat.com https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=711245 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • bugs.launchpad.net https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/720095 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • bugs.debian.org http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=629373 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • bugzilla.redhat.com https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=711134 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 7.8 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Intel 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.