CVE-2010-4250 Denial of service in n/a

What is CVE-2010-4250?

CVE-2010-4250 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 21 Jun 2012. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

Memory leak in the inotify_init1 function in fs/notify/inotify/inotify_user.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.37 allows local users to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) via vectors involving failed attempts to create files.

Weakness: CWE-399

Which versions are affected by CVE-2010-4250?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2010-4250?

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-2010-4250 being exploited?

It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2010-4250 exists.

Public exploit code: 1 Exploit-DB entry.

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-62vr-m7vf-79xv.