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Fencer Intel
medium 4.7

CVE-2019-20794 json

An issue was discovered in the Linux kernel 4.18 through 5.6.11 when unprivileged user namespaces are allowed.

published 6y ago modified last mo. also EUVD-2019-11331

cvss
4.7
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 43%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

An issue was discovered in the Linux kernel 4.18 through 5.6.11 when unprivileged user namespaces are allowed. A user can create their own PID namespace, and mount a FUSE filesystem. Upon interaction with this FUSE filesystem, if the userspace component is terminated via a kill of the PID namespace's pid 1, it will result in a hung task, and resources being permanently locked up until system reboot. This can result in resource exhaustion.

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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-2019-20794 updated cvss 4.7

kernel: task processes not being properly ended could lead to resource exhaustion

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-alt, python-perf, +9 more
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more
    affected: no fix available
  • Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2 kernel
    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 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +82 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

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
last mo.

Exploit prediction

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

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/sargun/fuse-example referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • sourceforge.net https://sourceforge.net/p/fuse/mailman/message/36598753/ referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 4.7 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 4.7 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-772 Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime
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.