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Fencer Intel
medium 5.5

CVE-2017-11171 json

Bad reference counting in the context of accept_ice_connection() in gsm-xsmp-server.c in old versions of gnome-session up until version 2.2…

published 9y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2017-2806

cvss
5.5
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 25%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Bad reference counting in the context of accept_ice_connection() in gsm-xsmp-server.c in old versions of gnome-session up until version 2.29.92 allows a local attacker to establish ICE connections to gnome-session with invalid authentication data (an invalid magic cookie). Each failed authentication attempt will leak a file descriptor in gnome-session. When the maximum number of file descriptors is exhausted in the gnome-session process, it will enter an infinite loop trying to communicate without success, consuming 100% of the CPU. The graphical session associated with the gnome-session process will stop working correctly, because communication with gnome-session is no longer possible.

Patch / fix

  • gnome-session Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.30.0-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2017-11171

  • gnome-session SLES for SAP 11 SP4, SLES 11 SP4 2.28.0-3.11.12.2

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2017:2173-1

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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-2017-11171 updated cvss 3.3

gnome-session: Bad reference counting in accept_ice_connection() permits resource exhaustion

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 gnome-session, gnome-session-xsession, gnome-session-custom-session
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 gnome-session Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 gnome-session, gnome-session-xsession, gnome-session-custom-session, gnome-session-wayland-session
    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

0.32% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 25% 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 4.9 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-835 Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition

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.