CVE-2017-12190 Denial of service in Linux kernel through v4.14-rc5

What is CVE-2017-12190?

CVE-2017-12190 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 22 Nov 2017. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

The bio_map_user_iov and bio_unmap_user functions in block/bio.c in the Linux kernel before 4.13.8 do unbalanced refcounting when a SCSI I/O vector has small consecutive buffers belonging to the same page. The bio_add_pc_page function merges them into one, but the page reference is never dropped. This causes a memory leak and possible system lockup (exploitable against the host OS by a guest OS user, if a SCSI disk is passed through to a virtual machine) due to an out-of-memory condition.

Weakness: CWE-772, CWE-400

Which versions are affected by CVE-2017-12190?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2017-12190?

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-2017-12190 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2017-12190 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-2017-12190, GHSA-cw63-cpqx-9vx9, UBUNTU-CVE-2017-12190.