CVE-2019-3901 Race condition in kernel

What is CVE-2019-3901?

CVE-2019-3901 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 22 Apr 2019. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

A race condition in perf_event_open() allows local attackers to leak sensitive data from setuid programs. As no relevant locks (in particular the cred_guard_mutex) are held during the ptrace_may_access() call, it is possible for the specified target task to perform an execve() syscall with setuid execution before perf_event_alloc() actually attaches to it, allowing an attacker to bypass the ptrace_may_access() check and the perf_event_exit_task(current) call that is performed in install_exec_creds() during privileged execve() calls. This issue affects kernel versions before 4.8.

Weakness: CWE-667

Which versions are affected by CVE-2019-3901?

It affects 10 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Linux kernel, Netapp Active Iq Unified Manager for Vmware Vsphere, Netapp Cn1610 Firmware, Netapp Hci Management Node, Netapp Snapprotect and 4 more.

How do I fix CVE-2019-3901?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2019-3901 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2019-3901 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Debian Debian Linux

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• CVE-2026-24061 GNU InetUtils Argument Injection Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2025-39682 Linux Kernel Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2024-9680 Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free Exploited Critical 9.8

All Debian Debian Linux vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2019-3901, GHSA-7w4w-2hxm-8cc6, UBUNTU-CVE-2019-3901.