CVE-2016-9039 Denial of service in SmartOS

Medium 6.2 Published 31 Jan 2017 Updated 6 Aug 2024

An attacker can cause memory exhaustion and system denial of service in Joyent SmartOS via the Hyprlofs file system Ioctl call.

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

What is CVE-2016-9039?

CVE-2016-9039 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Joyent SmartOS, published on 31 Jan 2017. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

An exploitable denial of service exists in the Joyent SmartOS 20161110T013148Z Hyprlofs file system. The vulnerability is present in the Ioctl system call with the command HYPRLOFS_ADD_ENTRIES. An attacker can cause a buffer to be allocated and never freed. When repeatedly exploited this will result in memory exhaustion, resulting in a full system denial of service.

Weakness: CWE-400

Which versions are affected by CVE-2016-9039?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Joyent Smartos.

How do I fix CVE-2016-9039?

No fix has been published for CVE-2016-9039 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-2016-9039 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2016-9039 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

Also known as GHSA-h4vg-vpxq-866j.