CVE-2017-5546 Denial of service in n/a

What is CVE-2017-5546?

CVE-2017-5546 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 6 Feb 2017. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

The freelist-randomization feature in mm/slab.c in the Linux kernel 4.8.x and 4.9.x before 4.9.5 allows local users to cause a denial of service (duplicate freelist entries and system crash) or possibly have unspecified other impact in opportunistic circumstances by leveraging the selection of a large value for a random number.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2017-5546?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2017-5546?

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-2017-5546 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2017-5546 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-2017-5546, GHSA-2cfp-q4hx-m356, UBUNTU-CVE-2017-5546.