CVE-2016-6242 Denial of service in n/a

Medium 5.5 Published 7 Mar 2017 Updated 6 Aug 2024

Local attackers can cause a kernel panic and denial of service in OpenBSD by passing a large ident value to the kevent system call.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Any signed-in user
Attackable: Local or same network only
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: None listed

What is CVE-2016-6242?

CVE-2016-6242 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Openbsd Openbsd, published on 7 Mar 2017. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

OpenBSD 5.8 and 5.9 allows local users to cause a denial of service (assertion failure and kernel panic) via a large ident value in a kevent system call.

Weakness: CWE-189

Which versions are affected by CVE-2016-6242?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Openbsd Openbsd.

How do I fix CVE-2016-6242?

No fix has been published for CVE-2016-6242 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

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-2016-6242 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2016-6242 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Openbsd Openbsd vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as GHSA-jf6q-68vq-p2q4.