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HIGH KEV

kernel: mm: privilege escalation via MAP_PRIVATE COW breakage

Published Nov 10, 2016 ·Due Mar 24, 2022

Description

Race condition in mm/gup.c in the Linux kernel 2.x through 4.x before 4.8.3 allows local users to gain privileges by leveraging incorrect handling of a copy-on-write (COW) feature to write to a read-only memory mapping, as exploited in the wild in October 2016, aka "Dirty COW."

Affected products

Remediation

Red Hat statement

This issue affects the Linux kernel packages as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6, 7 and MRG 2.x. This issue has been rated as having Important security impact.

Red Hat mitigation

Please see bug 1384344 comment #13 (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1384344#c13) for details on how to mitigate this issue.

Metrics

Weaknesses (1)

References (132)

Change history (0)

No recorded changes yet.

Sources
CVE.org / MITRE
Status PUBLISHED
Assigner Chrome
Published Nov 10, 2016
Updated Nov 4, 2025
Reserved May 31, 2016
CISA Vulnrichment
Updated Jan 29, 2025
NVD
Status Analyzed
Modified Jun 17, 2026
Red Hat
Severity Important
Public date Oct 19, 2016