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Fencer Intel
medium 5.5

CVE-2016-3961 json

Xen and the Linux kernel through 4.5.x do not properly suppress hugetlbfs support in x86 PV guests, which allows local PV guest OS users to…

published 2016-04-15 10 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2016-4970

cvss
5.5
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.5%
EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 43%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Xen and the Linux kernel through 4.5.x do not properly suppress hugetlbfs support in x86 PV guests, which allows local PV guest OS users to cause a denial of service (guest OS crash) by attempting to access a hugetlbfs mapped area.

Patch / fix

  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 4.5.2-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2016-3961

  • linux Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 3.13.0-101.148
  • linux Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 4.4.0-24.43
  • linux-raspi2 Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 4.4.0-1012.16
  • linux-lts-wily Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 4.2.0-38.45~14.04.1
  • linux-lts-vivid Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 3.19.0-61.69~14.04.1
  • linux-lts-xenial Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 4.4.0-24.43~14.04.1
  • linux-snapdragon Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 4.4.0-1015.18

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2016-3961

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-2016-3961 updated cvss 5.2

xen: hugetlbfs use may crash PV Linux guests (XSA-174)

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 xen
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”

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

0.51% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 43% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

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 2.1 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation

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.