CVE-2010-4251 Denial of service in n/a

What is CVE-2010-4251?

CVE-2010-4251 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 26 May 2011. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

The socket implementation in net/core/sock.c in the Linux kernel before 2.6.34 does not properly manage a backlog of received packets, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) by sending a large amount of network traffic, as demonstrated by netperf UDP tests.

Weakness: CWE-400

Which versions are affected by CVE-2010-4251?

It affects 3 products.

Products include Linux kernel, Redhat Enterprise Linux, Vmware Esx.

How do I fix CVE-2010-4251?

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-2010-4251 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2010-4251 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-mr9q-8286-4fv4.