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Fencer Intel
medium 5.5

CVE-2015-8953 json

fs/overlayfs/copy_up.c in the Linux kernel before 4.2.6 uses an incorrect cleanup code path, which allows local users to cause a denial of…

published 10y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2015-8809

cvss
5.5
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.6%
EPSS 0.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 47%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

fs/overlayfs/copy_up.c in the Linux kernel before 4.2.6 uses an incorrect cleanup code path, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (dentry reference leak) via filesystem operations on a large file in a lower overlayfs layer.

Patch / fix

  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 4.2.6-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2015-8953

  • linux-lts-wily Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 4.2.0-19.23~14.04.1
  • linux-lts-vivid Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 3.19.0-41.46~14.04.2

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2015-8953

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

Is CVE-2015-8953 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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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-2015-8953 updated cvss 6.1

kernel: overlayfs: Double dentry reference leak in copy-up failure

  • 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 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 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

0.56% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 47% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • git.kernel.org http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=ab79efab0a0ba01a74df782eb7fa44b044dae8b5 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • openwall.com http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/08/23/9 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

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 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.