CVE-2009-0778 Denial of service in n/a

What is CVE-2009-0778?

CVE-2009-0778 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 12 Mar 2009. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

The icmp_send function in net/ipv4/icmp.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.25, when configured as a router with a REJECT route, does not properly manage the Protocol Independent Destination Cache (aka DST) in some situations involving transmission of an ICMP Host Unreachable message, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (connectivity outage) by sending a large series of packets to many destination IP addresses within this REJECT route, related to an "rt_cache leak."

Which versions are affected by CVE-2009-0778?

It affects 6 products.

Products include Linux kernel, Vmware Esx, Vmware Server, Vmware Vcenter, Vmware Virtualcenter, Vmware Vma.

How do I fix CVE-2009-0778?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2009-0778 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2009-0778 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

• CVE-2026-53266 Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2013-6282 Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2022-0185 Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2013-2094 Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2026-53362 Linux Kernel Unspecified Exploited High 7.8

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as GHSA-2327-m5w2-rg7f.