CVE-2016-6213 Denial of service in n/a

What is CVE-2016-6213?

CVE-2016-6213 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 28 Dec 2016. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

fs/namespace.c in the Linux kernel before 4.9 does not restrict how many mounts may exist in a mount namespace, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (memory consumption and deadlock) via MS_BIND mount system calls, as demonstrated by a loop that triggers exponential growth in the number of mounts.

Weakness: CWE-400

Which versions are affected by CVE-2016-6213?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2016-6213?

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-2016-6213 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2016-6213 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-2016-6213, GHSA-wwfp-4jrf-hfh5, UBUNTU-CVE-2016-6213.