# CVE-2016-9040: Denial of service in SmartOS

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

- **Severity:** Medium 6.2 (`CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 7 Sep 2018
- **Updated:** 16 Sep 2024
- **Also known as:** GHSA-9x7x-fv7w-r8pq

## What is CVE-2016-9040?

CVE-2016-9040 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Joyent SmartOS, published on 7 Sep 2018. 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 the Joyent SmartOS OS 20161110T013148Z Hyprlofs file system. The vulnerability is present in the Ioctl system call with the command HYPRLOFSADDENTRIES when used with a 32 bit model. An attacker can cause a buffer to be allocated and never freed. When repeatedly exploit this will result in memory exhaustion, resulting in a full system denial of service.

Weakness: CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2016-9040?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Joyent Smartos.

## How do I fix CVE-2016-9040?

No fix has been published for CVE-2016-9040 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2016-9040 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2016-9040 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Joyent SmartOS

- [CVE-2018-1166](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-1166/): Use after free in Joyent SmartOS (high 7.8)
- [CVE-2016-8733](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2016-8733/): Integer overflow in SmartOS (high 7.8)
- [CVE-2016-9031](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2016-9031/): Integer overflow in SmartOS (high 7.8)
- [CVE-2018-1171](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-1171/): Memory corruption in Joyent SmartOS (high 7.0)
- [CVE-2018-1165](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-1165/): Memory corruption in Joyent SmartOS (high 7.0)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2016-9040 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2016-9040 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Joyent SmartOS, published on 7 Sep 2018. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2016-9040 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Joyent SmartOS. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2016-9040/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2016-9040/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2016-9040
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2016-9040
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2016-9040

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2016-9040/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.