CVE-2011-3638 Denial of service in n/a

Medium 4.0 Published 1 Mar 2013 Updated 6 Aug 2024

Local users can crash the system via ext4 umount and mount operations due to a missing dirty flag in extent splitting.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Any signed-in user
Attackable: Local or same network only
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2011-3638?

CVE-2011-3638 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 1 Mar 2013. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

fs/ext4/extents.c in the Linux kernel before 3.0 does not mark a modified extent as dirty in certain cases of extent splitting, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (system crash) via vectors involving ext4 umount and mount operations.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2011-3638?

It affects 1 product.

Linux distribution packages (18)

`kernel` Red Hat:rhel_eus:5.6	All versions	`0:2.6.18-238.37.1.el5`
`kernel-PAE` Red Hat:rhel_eus:5.6	All versions	`0:2.6.18-238.37.1.el5`
`kernel-PAE-debuginfo` Red Hat:rhel_eus:5.6	All versions	`0:2.6.18-238.37.1.el5`
`kernel-PAE-devel` Red Hat:rhel_eus:5.6	All versions	`0:2.6.18-238.37.1.el5`
`kernel-debug` Red Hat:rhel_eus:5.6	All versions	`0:2.6.18-238.37.1.el5`
`kernel-debug-debuginfo` Red Hat:rhel_eus:5.6	All versions	`0:2.6.18-238.37.1.el5`
`kernel-debug-devel` Red Hat:rhel_eus:5.6	All versions	`0:2.6.18-238.37.1.el5`
`kernel-debuginfo` Red Hat:rhel_eus:5.6	All versions	`0:2.6.18-238.37.1.el5`
`kernel-debuginfo-common` Red Hat:rhel_eus:5.6	All versions	`0:2.6.18-238.37.1.el5`
`kernel-devel` Red Hat:rhel_eus:5.6	All versions	`0:2.6.18-238.37.1.el5`
`kernel-doc` Red Hat:rhel_eus:5.6	All versions	`0:2.6.18-238.37.1.el5`
`kernel-headers` Red Hat:rhel_eus:5.6	All versions	`0:2.6.18-238.37.1.el5`
`kernel-kdump` Red Hat:rhel_eus:5.6	All versions	`0:2.6.18-238.37.1.el5`
`kernel-kdump-debuginfo` Red Hat:rhel_eus:5.6	All versions	`0:2.6.18-238.37.1.el5`
`kernel-kdump-devel` Red Hat:rhel_eus:5.6	All versions	`0:2.6.18-238.37.1.el5`
`kernel-xen` Red Hat:rhel_eus:5.6	All versions	`0:2.6.18-238.37.1.el5`
`kernel-xen-debuginfo` Red Hat:rhel_eus:5.6	All versions	`0:2.6.18-238.37.1.el5`
`kernel-xen-devel` Red Hat:rhel_eus:5.6	All versions	`0:2.6.18-238.37.1.el5`

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2011-3638?

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-2011-3638 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2011-3638 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as GHSA-fq63-9c29-w9fw, RHSA-2012:0517.