CVE-2016-2053 Denial of service in n/a

What is CVE-2016-2053?

CVE-2016-2053 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 2 May 2016. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

The asn1_ber_decoder function in lib/asn1_decoder.c in the Linux kernel before 4.3 allows attackers to cause a denial of service (panic) via an ASN.1 BER file that lacks a public key, leading to mishandling by the public_key_verify_signature function in crypto/asymmetric_keys/public_key.c.

Weakness: CWE-310

Which versions are affected by CVE-2016-2053?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2016-2053?

Apply the vendor's patch.

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-2016-2053 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2016-2053 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 DEBIAN-CVE-2016-2053, GHSA-7689-m3w7-j29p, UBUNTU-CVE-2016-2053.