CVE-2018-1091 Denial of service in Linux kernel v4.13 and newer

What is CVE-2018-1091?

CVE-2018-1091 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 27 Mar 2018. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

In the flush_tmregs_to_thread function in arch/powerpc/kernel/ptrace.c in the Linux kernel before 4.13.5, a guest kernel crash can be triggered from unprivileged userspace during a core dump on a POWER host due to a missing processor feature check and an erroneous use of transactional memory (TM) instructions in the core dump path, leading to a denial of service.

Weakness: CWE-119, CWE-391

Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-1091?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2018-1091?

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-2018-1091 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-1091 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-2018-1091, GHSA-8x9x-6w2w-w9h8.