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Fencer Intel
medium 6.8

CVE-2015-8816 json

The hub_activate function in drivers/usb/core/hub.c in the Linux kernel before 4.3.5 does not properly maintain a hub-interface data struct…

published 10y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2015-8682

cvss
6.8
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 46%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The hub_activate function in drivers/usb/core/hub.c in the Linux kernel before 4.3.5 does not properly maintain a hub-interface data structure, which allows physically proximate attackers to cause a denial of service (invalid memory access and system crash) or possibly have unspecified other impact by unplugging a USB hub device.

Patch / fix

  • linux linux_kernel 3.2.76, 3.4.113, 3.10.103, 3.12.58, 3.14.76, 3.16.35, 3.18.27, 4.1.17, 4.3.5
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 4.4.2-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2015-8816

  • linux Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 3.13.0-79.123
  • linux-lts-wily Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 4.2.0-30.35~14.04.1
  • linux-lts-vivid Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 3.19.0-51.57~14.04.1
  • linux-lts-utopic Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 3.16.0-62.82~14.04.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2015-8816

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-rt SLE Real Time 12 SP1 3.12.58-14.1
  • kernel-compute SLE Real Time 12 SP1 3.12.58-14.1
  • kernel-syms-rt SLE Real Time 12 SP1 3.12.58-14.1
  • kernel-rt_debug SLE Real Time 12 SP1 3.12.58-14.1
  • kernel-source-rt SLE Real Time 12 SP1 3.12.58-14.1
  • kernel-compute_debug SLE Real Time 12 SP1 3.12.58-14.1
  • kernel-rt SLE Real Time 11 SP4 3.0.101.rt130-54.1
  • kernel-syms-rt SLE Real Time 11 SP4 3.0.101.rt130-54.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2016:2074-1SUSE-SU-2016:2002-1SUSE-SU-2016:1994-1SUSE-SU-2016:2009-1SUSE-SU-2016:2007-1SUSE-SU-2016:2014-1

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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-2015-8816 updated cvss 4.9

kernel: USB hub invalid memory access in hub_activate()

  • 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
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • 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

Exploit prediction

0.55% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 46% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 6.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:P/AC:L/PR:N/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 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.