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Fencer Intel
medium 6.3

CVE-2017-15102 json

The tower_probe function in drivers/usb/misc/legousbtower.c in the Linux kernel before 4.8.1 allows local users (who are physically proxima…

published 2017-11-15 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2017-6569

cvss
6.3
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 33%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The tower_probe function in drivers/usb/misc/legousbtower.c in the Linux kernel before 4.8.1 allows local users (who are physically proximate for inserting a crafted USB device) to gain privileges by leveraging a write-what-where condition that occurs after a race condition and a NULL pointer dereference.

Patch / fix

  • linux linux_kernel 4.8.1
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 4.7.8-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2017-15102

  • linux Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 3.13.0-142.191
  • linux Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 4.4.0-47.68
  • linux-raspi2 Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 4.4.0-1038.45
  • linux-lts-xenial Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 4.4.0-47.68~14.04.1
  • linux-snapdragon Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 4.4.0-1035.39

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2017-15102

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 11 SP4 3.0.101.rt130-69.14.1
  • kernel-syms-rt SLE Real Time 11 SP4 3.0.101.rt130-69.14.1
  • kernel-rt_trace SLE Real Time 11 SP4 3.0.101.rt130-69.14.1
  • kernel-source-rt SLE Real Time 11 SP4 3.0.101.rt130-69.14.1
  • kernel-ec2 SLES 11 SP3-LTSS, SLE Point of Sale 11 SP3 3.0.101-0.47.106.11.1
  • kernel-pae SLES 11 SP3-LTSS, SLE Point of Sale 11 SP3 3.0.101-0.47.106.11.1
  • kernel-xen SLES 11 SP3-LTSS, SLE Point of Sale 11 SP3 3.0.101-0.47.106.11.1
  • kernel-syms SLES 11 SP3-LTSS, SLE Point of Sale 11 SP3 3.0.101-0.47.106.11.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2018:0180-1SUSE-SU-2018:0040-1SUSE-SU-2017:3265-1SUSE-SU-2017:3249-1SUSE-SU-2017:3210-1

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-2017-15102 updated cvss 6.3

kernel: NULL pointer dereference due to race condition in probe function of legousbtower driver

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 kernel 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 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
    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

0.39% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 33% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 6.3 CVSS:3.0/AV:P/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.9 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Affected products

  • n/a Linux kernel through version 4.9-rc1

Classification

Weakness
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.